


Preantepenultimate

by lonerofthepack



Series: Reticence 'verse [4]
Category: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (Movies)
Genre: BAMF Original Percival Graves, Canon-Typical Violence, Discussion of Human Trafficking, Discussion of fictional police work, Gen, Kinda?, Medical Trauma, Period-Typical Homophobia, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Selectively Mute Original Percival Graves, Suicidal Thoughts, allegories to mccarthyism, alright I lied this has a legitimate plot and has entirely escaped my control, but have a care, competent!Newt Scamander, discussion of substance use, meet cute, mostly passive though stronger in the past, no beta we die like men, sympathetic portray of fictional cops, this is mostly naught but fluff my lads, touch-starved Percival Graves, use of prescribed pain medication
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-04-26
Updated: 2021-02-17
Packaged: 2021-03-01 17:00:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 15
Words: 42,708
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23850457
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lonerofthepack/pseuds/lonerofthepack
Summary: Newt Scamander had not intended to return to New York, much less the Woolworth building.Nevertheless, he arrived on the second of May, bedraggled and soaking from the spring rains with his arm trapped in a junior auror's grip, and just in time to make himself useful.
Relationships: Post Original Percival Graves/Gellert Grindelwald, pre Original Percival Graves/Newt Scamander
Series: Reticence 'verse [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1702375
Comments: 167
Kudos: 351





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Folks, I’m not hard of hearing or deaf, and I know only a smattering of ASL that I picked up informally. American Sign Language was developed at the ASD in Hartford, Connecticut in 1817, and British Sign Language in 1760. Despite that, I can’t see any reason in what little we know of either Newt or Percival’s background that would indicate that they would have any experience with those forms of communications; that’s no excuse for not including it, but I’m not especially comfortable with inventing a deaf or hard of hearing sibling for Percival (or Newt) without a great deal more research. Leaving aside the fact that many families even today don’t necessarily make an effort to become fluid in sign for various reasons and not-reasons, affluent families in the 1920s certainly would have felt no pressure to do so if they acknowledged the child at all. That's besides the fact that I haven't written Percival as deaf or hard of hearing.
> 
> Percival is suffering from what would have been referred to as shell shock in the 1920s, and removed from immediate proximity to the theater of war, there would have been an enormous amount of social pressure to keep such a disability as invisible as possible. Especially in such a high governmental position. Shell shock was not a well-regarded condition; PTSD is still widely misunderstood and its symptoms stigmatized and dismissed. 
> 
> Selective mutism is typically seen in children, and is comorbid with a number of social, behavioral, and developmental comorbidities; it does sometimes persist into adulthood. Mutism in adults, even with PTSD, is generally considered neuropsychological, as it often presents with brain damage. In this instance, I’m utilizing it purely as a maladaptive coping technique/dissociative symptom of post traumatic stress disorder. 
> 
> So. All that said, my solution is to approximate many things. The tradition of military hand-signals is long and storied, and hand-signals were absolutely in use during WWI, especially by the RAF, which I’ve based the Flying Corps on — it is notoriously difficult to hear over the noise of airplanes, and dragons are best appreciated from outside of flaming distance. American and British hand signals may vary slightly, but they seem to be similar enough to allow for a rough conversation. 
> 
> This isn’t beta’d, nor sensitivity-read. I'm open to the notion of constructive criticism, with the permanent caveat that it remains at all times civil, and I maintain the right to not edit the work even if the criticism is lovely.

Newt Scamander had not intended to return to New York, much less the Woolworth building. 

Nevertheless, he arrived on the second of May, bedraggled and soaking from the spring rains with his arm trapped in a junior auror's grip, and just in time to make himself useful. 

  
MACUSA’s Monday morning’s disaster, that dreary day in May: someone had abandoned an entire herd of winged horses in the middle of Fairmount Park that were maddeningly spell-resistant. And no one could quite figure out how to catch them without obliviating half the no maj population of west Philadelphia.

But caught they must be, housed, and as quickly as possible, so that the circumstances of their abandonment could be hunted down.

It had been almost humorous— quite serious, given the potential for exposure, but far more light-hearted than the _last_ time the alarm clock had been pointing into the red. No one terribly hurt, no one dying, and enough lead time to get no-maj repellents and concealment charms strung up. The sort of disaster that could be taken home and shared as an amusing anecdote. 

Not so much, now, not when what had gone from an initial report and low-stakes strategy meeting had soured with one off-hand comment. Not now that the head of the DMLE was watching every move with cool consideration in his eyes that promised months of increased scrutiny.

Certainly no one wanted to be the second fool of the day, not after the first, who had suggested that culling the lot of them from the treeline might be most expedient -- especially not after that unfortunate had received the most deeply disappointed expression anyone could remember the Director making recently, made cutting with a pointed glance at his pocket watch and an unimpressed blink— and only worse when the Director hushed an attempt to explain it away as a joke with a gently quelling hand gesture, and waved them all on past the misstep before it could be excused.

So when Junior Auror Watts dragged a dripping, protesting magizoologist in to account for himself, it was to a bullpen that was furiously busy and unnaturally quiet, bustling around the spot where the Director was leaning hard on his cane and frowning at the case board hosting a dozen images of fifteen rearing-bucking-flying horses making a park green into a mud pit, with a handful of mirrors propped to allow rapid communication.

At the flash of teal wool at their threshold, the entire room froze, and unnaturally quiet went entirely silent but for the murmur of noise through the charmed mirrors. Mr. Graves’s head came up at the first hint of change in the room, and Scamander went stiff as well — and whether it was at the sight of the Director, because there wasn’t a soul in the department who _hadn’t_ heard Tina Goldstein’s rendition of how that had come about--or because a roomful of aurors was staring at him suddenly like a wolf pack at a sheep who’d stumbled in, who could say?

The Director let the silence sit for the length of a breath, perhaps to see if Scamander would go for his wand. 

Everyone relaxed some, when he didn’t.

When another breath went by without a sound, Graves looked past Scamander’s shoulder. Raised eyebrows and a fluid sort of hand gesture requested an explanation.

"Caught him with a Niffler down by the docks, sir," Watts offered. "Says his name is Scamander, and that he's a magizoologist. Hasn't got permits, though, sir."

Well. _Nearly_ everyone had heard Tina Goldstein’s rendition of the last time a British magizoologist had rolled through like a hurricane.

"The Ministry of Magic doesn't issue permits for Nifflers," Scamander said, with the aggrieved tone of someone who has repeated themselves numerous times in the last quarter hour, and he didn't for a moment look away from the Director. "I told you, no one does, they're considered a pest, but they're quite intelligent and they're delicate. Immobilization is incredibly stressful for them, so I'll repeat my request that you stop hurting mine!"

"Give him his Niffler back, please," the Director said, and the room went stiff again, though this time, it made Scamander blink and glance around for why that might be. “Mr. Scamander’s updated permits can be found in Records.” A pointed look and a lift of his chin has one of the more experienced officers jumping up to hustle Watts down to Records. 

It was the most he'd said in two weeks.

“Mr. Scamander. May I ask for a moment of your time while your paperwork is being collected?”

No, _now_ it was the most he'd said in a single go within Auror earshot since he'd dragged himself in straight from the hospital. Scamander shifted quite uncomfortably at the stares he was getting.

With his Niffler freed and returned to him, and additional manhandling becoming increasingly unlikely despite the very strange looks he was under, Scamander's posture loosened to hunch around the little creature in his hands, carefully checking it for any signs of injury.

He didn’t look up from his creature to say: "No...disrespect intended, Director Graves, but might I inquire exactly what might you want with a moment?"

A few of the junior aurors bristled. At least one of the senior aurors reached for a cigarette.

The Director had to wait a moment for him to glance up, and then tilted his head in invitation toward the case board. He hadn't moved away from it with Scamander's dramatic entrance, so it was a simple matter to turn back to it and leave him to his decision-making when he saw that Scamander had seen the gesture — to tug out a notepad and snatch up a pen, and scribble madly, in case Scamander's curiosity got the better of him.

Which it must have, since a moment later, Scamander sidled close enough to actually see the images, hovering at the bitterest edge of Graves' peripheral vision.

Graves breathed through the prickle of discomfort climbing up his back at where Scamander was standing, and offered him the scrap of paper, without looking to see how much distance Scamander had actually left between them. He half-jolted when fingers bumped his only a second later.

Quite--quite close, then.

"Oh, sorry. Er, what's," and then Scamander hummed softly, reading. He was standing close enough that Graves could hear the wheezy chitters of a Niffler purring.

What to make of that, Graves wondered, and waited for Scamander to finish reading, or respond, or whatever it was he might do, besides hovering at the elbow of a man whose voice had sentenced him to die unjustly. 

"Er. If you’d rather, I remember the Flying Corps hand signals well-enough. British, though — not sure if that’s a help.” 

_Circe_ , that was right, Percival remembered Theseus Scamander had mentioned something about a brother, who had flown dragons on the East Front. He remembered the man had been well-sloshed at the time, too, so he hadn’t given it much thought — everyone had a cousin or a brother who’d ‘flown dragons’ during the War, and mostly it meant they hadn’t returned, or hadn’t entirely returned, in whatever way that might mean. And the East Front had been the sort of hell no-one who’d actually been there ever wanted to talk about. He’d raised his glass to Theseus Scamander’s brother, and then hauled the man back to his rooms to sleep it off. 

Signaling...well, damned that he hadn’t thought of it himself. 

Message acknowledged, he motioned, a gesture a thousand times smaller than he’d have used to signal a man on a battlefield a lifetime ago, and caught glimpse of a smile tugging at pale lips--and one finger, lifted away from stroking down the Niffler’s back, sketched out ‘ready’. 

Flown dragons. Mercy Lewis.

Alright.

‘Stop-listen-look,’ was the next he tired, with a curious head tilt that might make it a question, and an entirely non-regulation gesture at the board. And then:

_At your mark_. 

“Pyrois horses,” Scamander reported immediately, and he didn’t fall to attention but kept on with his Niffler. Graves couldn’t think why he’d thought differently--something in Scamander’s body language had shifted, but he couldn’t quite pinpoint how, and there was nothing military about it. 

“Bred for sport. Excellent for aerial steeplechase, but, er. Poor travelers, since they’re largely night-blind and tend towards excitability. Not so popular here, I’d imagine, as in Belfast, but those look reasonably well-kept from these images, so not off a boat recently. I’d need...time with them, to tell you anything about these particular animals, that would be of use to you. They’ll have to be caught by hand, with, hmmm, completely mundane rope. You’re looking at...err, three hundred galleons a head there, just to start. Not sure about the conversion to dragots.”

Percival blinked, did the math, blinked twice and checked it--and then he turned to stare at the magizoologist in incredulity. 1500, he signed. For — he didn’t recall the sign for horses, and rapped a fingertip against the board. It was an insane sum, and the complications it created were practically unfathomable. 

Scamander choked down a smile, turned it off to the side to shield it. “They are race horses, Director Graves; from the looks of it, they’re primarily racing age, as well.”

Fuck. 

“What...exactly do you intend to do with them, once they’re caught?”

His plans had not accounted for fucking flying racehorses. Double fuck.

He reached for his pen and paper once more. Started jotting down options, and handed the page over when there were half a dozen.

Not so many hand-signals that asked for input, so he sketched ‘look, listen, report’ again, and started to write again while he waited, a series of instructions. Weiss was starting to hover, anticipating them, and he passed the sheet off presently, tapping the top-most point to be sure it was seen.

“I’ll have her bring them, sir,” Weiss promised. “O’Sullivan has rendezvoused with Philadelphia, they’re Apparating to the site now. I’ll drop him a line about the rope, but last I heard, they’re waiting on Ilvermorny for someone who’s maybe got the experience to use it.”

He lifted a pausing finger, and scribbled on the note again — steeplechase? — and nodded thanks to Weiss’s crisp acknowledgement. He pulled a new sheet forward to scribble on as Weiss disappeared to take a message to Mrs Colon and chase down the new lead.

When he looked up, it was to find Scamander watching him and Mrs. Colon bustling her way across the bullpen with a small stack of papers in hand.

“It's a week until the next ship to South America comes into port," is what Scamander said, and there were multitudes behind his careful expression.

And Graves smiled.

_I’m very sorry that my Department has caused a delay to your travels_ , he wrote. _We will be happy to assist with accommodation until you can secure passage._

_As it happens, I have an offer I’d like you to consider._


	2. Chapter 2

As it happens, Newt Scamander read through the contract at lightning speed, said something rather garbled about a week’s trial period being best for everyone, and seemed absolutely delighted to tear off to Philadelphia to capture some far-too-fucking-expensive-for-their-own-fucking-good winged horses. 

The Director was left clutching a sheaf of papers only half signed, leaning hard on his cane to balance against the whirlwind of the DMLE's newest consultant, who paused only to snap up the handle of a battered brown case from where Watts had dropped it and dash off a salute from the door as he disappeared through it.

O’Sullivan returned to New York well-past supper time, mud-soaked and glowering the way only an Irishman in a badly weatherproofed coat can, squelching his way down the hall to push a battered carrying case into Percival’s hands when the Director opened his office door. “He’s a lunatic. Sir,” he snarled, and then he turned around and squelched back down the hallway to the Apparation point, back to Philadelphia to finish cleaning up the mess. 

That seemed rather promising — Graves waited a moment for the pages of O'Sullivan's preliminary report to rustle into his inbox, and scanned it quickly. Yes, quite promising indeed. 

The lunatic, when he poked his head up out of the case to answer the Director’s knocking, was as mud-smeared as O’Sullivan and several times more cheerful about it. 

He was also quite pleased to be given leave to care for the creatures for the duration of his time here or until a more permanent situation could be figured out--he’d had an entire spiel, some dreadful mix of thanking and asking to do the work that Graves had let him get about three sentences into before asking for quiet with a gesture, to scrawl an assurance that MACUSA would be picking up the tab for their care. 

That startled him to gobsmacked silence for a long moment, to be allowed to do it and on MACUSA's dime--given the price of good feed, he said, shakily.

_Circe's tits_ , the Director grumbled so under-breath the words barely crossed his lips, and wondered not-for-the-first-time what was wrong with the British Ministry. It didn’t seem to have occurred to Scamander at all that there was, in fact, an entire paycheck that came with the position he’d accepted so provisionally, and that the cost of the feed would be rolled into the incidentals of the case and likely reclaimed from those responsible for the abandonment. He certainly didn’t seem to realize that the position he’d signed on for that morning was as the head, if currently only, magizoologist in the DMLE’s newly minted Creatures division.

If the Brits were going to be wasteful, letting one of theirs run around becoming an international menace, Graves had no compunction about stealing their best and brightest. Lunatic or not, Scamander had gotten excellent results twice now on American soil, with no warning and less prep time, and those results would almost certainly improve further with support. If he could be coerced into doing paperwork neatly, he'd be the platonic ideal of an auror consultant.

Come on, Graves signaled, and croaked: _dinner_ , when the lunatic just stared in confusion at him. 

“I could eat,” he admitted, and scrambled out.

It wasn’t for nearly a full day that Graves realized that Scamander didn’t actually intend to find any further accommodation than a safe dry space for his case.

He'd been rather impressed, to find the case tucked neatly into the far corner of the bullpen when he arrived the next morning--Graves routinely arrived for the morning as the night shift was wandering in from patrols to write their reports, two or three hours 'til the shift change. To beat the Director getting in took dedication.

Staying the night took its own sort, though.

_I was in earnest when I said the Department would assist with_ _accommodations_ , he wrote, and stuck to the outside of the case, as the aurors schlepped back in from the morning's drills. 

Feeling perhaps a bit foolish, he set a light ward that would alert him when Scamander emerged or came back, and endeavored to fetch a fresh coffee when it chimed at him.

"Oh, Director," Scamander greeted, ducking his head in a polite nod in response to Graves’ long stare as he came into the room. "That's very kind, but a corner will do fine," he said, muffled, adjusting the fifty-pound feed sack he'd hauled in over one shoulder--like he’d forgotten his wand was clenched between his teeth.

“Unless it’s in the way?”

He paused beside the case, cocked his head in question. 

Like half the room wasn’t staring, open-mouthed, not only because of the impressive size of the burden, but because he’d stripped down to shirt-sleeves and bared suspenders, and then rolled those sleeves up to his elbows to do the work.

Like it hadn’t occurred to each of them, or wouldn’t, over the course of another few moments, that the Auror department is a solid ten minute stroll from any of the entrances he might have come in with that sort of load. Like none of them have noticed that neither his breath nor his stride had hitched for a moment when he’d shimmied open the door or shimmied it gently closed again.

Like his arrival hadn’t wafted clean-sweat, tall-grass, oats-and-molasses scents through the entire department.

Graves didn’t quite know what it was his face did, as he shook his head slowly no, and blinked at the half-muffled brilliance of the smile he got for it before Scamander disappeared back into his traveling case. Somewhere hovering around bemused, he thought, and tried to remember the last time he’d felt something quite so fond as bemused.

“That coat,” one of the clerks muttered, entirely too loudly if he could hear it from the other side of the room, “does him no favors.”

No one disagreed, though the Director did audibly sigh at that terribly professional pronouncement.

And that got a muffled laugh. 

The first in months.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In which I continue procrastinate from real life and reach new heights of procrastination by also ignoring the case portion of this case fic in favor of... medically necessary cuddling. At some later point, there'll be porn.
> 
> At some point on tumblr, approximately a year ago, descaladumidera asked for touch-starved Percival Graves.

  
_You’re not in the way_ ; Percival wrote, finally, on the third day of coming in to find Scamander’s case tucked neatly in the back by the caseboard.

_But I won’t have my junior aurors getting the idea that they’re welcome to sleep in the office. If you won’t agree to a hotel, allow me to invite you to my home for the evenings. You’re welcome to the spare bed if you’d like it, or whichever corner is most suitable for your traveling case._

_If that won’t suit, at least let me offer my office_ , he wrote, and scratched out, and wrote again. Fretting, he added: _We can spare you a bit of privacy_ , and finally limped out to pin it to the top of the case, unreadable to anyone but the intended recipient. 

Refusing to dither any longer, he went down to the gymnasium to set a course for his aurors to run for drills that would get their blood properly pumping, because there was enough damp chill in the air to make his knee scream and he wouldn’t be doing any sparring today.

He…ached. Muscles and bones and skin, no matter if he worked hard or light, no matter if it was warm or cold, or how he slept or what he ate. He ached.

Mostly, he ignored it. It was a fact of life, and there wasn't anything to be done since nothing made it better, so he set his teeth and carried on.

But the pain damp brought was a special sort of hell, stabbed him in the leg afresh, and made his entire body shiver with a spectral cold no matter how warm the room, until the shivering had brought its own sort of torment, violin-string muscle tension and assorted aches. It was the sort of pain that made him want to drown himself in a hot shower, so that at least he’d die warm.

He heard the noise of the door, and checked the wards instinctively— his own, and the gym's, which wouldn't permit anyone to send a spell for a turned back unless tuned very specifically to allow that sort of sparring — and curbed the impulse to whirl. He was levitating a piece of equipment too heavy to drop carelessly, he couldn't afford to be stupid, even if his neck and back were _prickling_.

Another spell caught the equipment as his distraction made it wobble dangerously,magic too attuned to anxiety these days to be entirely controllable.

“Just me, Director,” he heard Scamander say—

\--and he _jumped_ , when Scamander touched him, like the whole of his arm had been scalded, and thank Circe Scamander had helped take the levitation spell, because he nearly dropped it when his knee tried to dump him to the ground for the insult. 

He didn’t fall, but that was only because Scamander hadn’t startled at his instinctive jolt, and _had_ responded to his panicked grab, seizing Percival more firmly to steady him instead of flinching from where he grabbed a fistful of Scamander’s jacket to stay upright. The cane was not so lucky, the clatter far too loud in his ears.

“Merlin, I’m sorry—”

“Down,” he managed, and between them, the equipment settled with barely a thump. 

And he nearly followed the same trajectory again, wobbling painfully with no way to get enough weight onto the better leg and for a terribly heartbeat's time, completely dependent on the grip Scamander had on him to stay up -- until Newt stepped forward even more, closed the distance between them, and it was enough to get his good leg under him again, made balance a little less tenuous and the agony of weight on curse-damage a little less _blinding_.

"I've got you. Do you need to sit?"

Couldn't — if he went to the floor in this sort of condition, he'd never get up again without help. A lot of help — the sort of help that Healers could give, with tinctures for the pain and chairs spelled to wheel themselves.

And forced bed-rest, and leaves of absence, and all sorts of things he wanted nothing to do with.

No, he shook his head, and breathed raggedly, trying to will the apology choking in his throat to sound, while he tried to will enough strength into trembling legs that he could take his own weight back from Scamander. 

Tried to shake in a way that wasn’t quite so noticeable, because the pressure of Scamander’s body against him was making his skin spark, like sitting far too close to a fire.

Failed at all of those self-appointed tasks, and ended up mostly frozen instead, stiff and aching and unable to move for fear of tipping over, and desperate to move, to let Scamander go free.

“Sorry,” he gritted, through teeth clenched hard enough to hurt, on a breath that struggled to replace itself. There ought to have been more to that sentence, there were several more words somewhere between his brain and his tongue that seemed to have tripped off the path, but at least that one had made it.

_Circe’s tits_ , managing to say one word shouldn’t leave him dizzy.

“Nothing to apologize for,” Scamander replied, and shifted slightly in a way that made Percival twitch, because they were pressed now nearly chest to chest — that made him suck in a breath when some angle of stress eased, let him balance for a desperately-needed moment to _breathe_. “I’m very sorry to have startled you. You, er. I won’t drop you. You can--take as long as you need, er. Or, if there’s, uh, anything. Anything you need.”

Anything he needed. 

He needed a voice that worked when he willed it to, and a leg that didn’t fail on him. He needed skin that didn’t prickle and tremble, needed a body that would behave as he expected, magic that wasn’t still shaky and ill-controlled months after regaining his freedom. He needed Grindelwald’s head separated from his shoulders and—

Anything he needed, was it.

Report, he signaled, and tapped gently to ease the command to something like a question, fingers shaking and sluggish to unwind from Scamander’s jacket where he’d grabbed--he folded them back into the twill when even that was enough to make his balance, and all the pain that rode on the knife-edge of it, feel precarious. His head felt heavy on his neck, any shift greater than careful breathing quite possibly too much to bear. 

Something to distract him from an ugly useless spiral around his own helplessness, something to serve as solid ground while his legs relearned how to work. Something that would give him half a chance of noticing when Scamander’s limits had been well and truly crossed, when he should just give up and let himself fail. The sound of Scamander’s voice might do it.

“Ah--yes, of course. I found your note. It’s terribly kind of you, to offer. I wouldn’t want to inconvenience you, I’m, um, not especially good with, er. Humans. But. If you’re in earnest.”

Graves nodded. It was easier than he’d expected, didn't feel quite so much like nails stabbing up the length of his spine.

“I must insist that you allow me to take you for a nice dinner, in that case. And of course, you should come and see the horses, when you have a moment. They're a sight less mud-covered now, and have lovely temperaments as they settle. I've laid down a bit of sod in Frank's old space, put in some a few shade trees— prairie is odd stuff, you know, all those grass roots just meters deep to hold the water. Not exactly ideal pasture, but they're not training, and it’s much easier to transition from a desert biome that way, not quite so transgressive. Scrub, then prairie, build up the top-soil to work into, er, something a bit closer to temperate forests--that what most of your farmland is on here, isn’t it? Er, prairie and transitioned temperate forest, I mean.”

The chatter was good, gave him something to breathe to, made him divide his attention away from pain enough to figure out how he might move, now that he could contemplate such a thing.

Another miniscule shift ruined Scamander’s hard work, and blacked out his vision in a way he wished wasn’t so familiar. It was his own fault, trying to move before his muscles had relaxed from the initial pain, but that didn’t stop him from flinching away from it, ducking to hide from the betrayal of his nervous system and muffle a voiceless shout into the cloth he found himself panting against.

“Ah, muscle cramp or just--well, no, that’s not important just now, let’s get you off it, see if we can’t-- _adventum sella!_ ”

A chair. Now that was an idea. 

Getting into it, even with Scamander's careful, steady help, required an unthinkable amount of strength not to scream or pass out.

"Mr. Graves. Did the healers give you anything to take home, to help with the pain?"

Didn't have to see or stop panting to nod, so he did.

"Is it somewhere I could fetch it for you?"

No, sadly. And even if it was, that would take away Scamander's voice and Scamander's hands, one currently suffering his grip and the other rubbing long strokes from his shoulder to his elbow and back. Between them, this was a gentler come down than many he'd gritted his teeth and breathed through.

"I can fetch someone from Medical."

Definitely not.

"Alright. Did the Healers recommend heat or cold for it?"

The Healers had recommended another two months of bed rest, and then more potions than he could think through, nevermind that the combination of stillness and hazy-headedness each made the other unbearable, scraped all his nerves raw and set them on fire. The pain only made him want to die someplace warm sometimes—being trapped in a narrow hospital cot, still in pain, with people who didn't listen because he couldn't speak telling him he must do things he couldn't stand--that made it constant and as urgent as escaping a bear trap.

"Let's give cold a try, first, see if that helps any. It might make you a bit stiff, but it'll numb, a bit, and if there's any inflammation, it'll help that as well. Alright?"

He ducked a nod, mostly aware of the question Newt asked, and watched with minimal understanding as he tugged out a handkerchief and folded it one-handed over his own leg, before rapping it and commanding cold with a spell Percival hadn't ever seen before.

"Alright, we'll see how this does for a few minutes. Tell me if it's too cold or if the pain gets worse?"

He nodded again, and Scamander slipped the icy cloth over his knee, so the chill seeped through his trousers. The first touch rode the edge of unpleasantness, dragged a sharp breath out of him as it teased chill-wracked muscles with the specter of further pain. But it was a dry cold, sharp as a winter’s dawn. 

And Scamander's free hand wandered back to his, patted him gently and resumed the slow rub up and down the outside of his arm, hypnotically soothing. 

It was all he could do not to weep, the slow-growing relief of the cold and the unquestioning generosity of a kind, careful touch that assumed nothing, and took nothing.

  
The cold took another twenty minutes to fully settle into his knee and quiet the pain enough that he could stand, shakily. It took leaning hard on the cane, with Scamander hovering within catching distance, but he could do it, with care. Walking on it was harder, took gritting his teeth and breathing steadily to overcome the surge of nausea-inducing pain, but he could do that, too. Scamander hovered closer for a handful of gingerly-taken strides, and then eased away to a more reasonable distance.

More and more things to thank the man for.

Getting back to his office, having waved the magizoologist back to his case and his creatures wanting breakfast at the department’s threshold, was a slow, fraught affair that halted two steps too early when Delgato caught up with him.

"Looking a bit rough there, boss. Alright?"

An even deadpan stare was enough answer to that— his hand shook on his wand, pulled to sketch words in the air, swiping them away when they were too sloppy to countenance.

_Drills are on you today — no slacking. And mind the footwork._

“Aww, boss,” he moaned. “Weiss called to schedule a check in. I could —”

A look silenced the whining. _Drills_ , he underlined, and then swept away the lot. _Ten minutes_. 


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Right, sorry for the delay. Finals caught me, and then this one fought me hard. But! I have passed all my classes, and succeeded in producing plot! Nevermind the hand-wavyness.
> 
> So. Given that this fic is essentially three lizards in a trench-coat in that it is based off of approximately three prompts that I saw on tumblr and liked; we'll call them plot points A, C, and X: 
> 
> If you have prompts or thoughts or requests that might flesh out D-W, I'm willing to entertain them, so long as we all agree that they may not end up in this fic. That said, if it's a prompt, thought, or request that doesn't end up in this fic, I will do my damnedest to give it a whirl as a separate chapter/au-thing. You can also find me on tumblr, under the same username. I don't post updates or anything there, tho'.
> 
> Also -- lifesavers were introduced in 1912, in the original peppermint flavor. Bet you didn't know that.

With Weiss and O'Sullivan on-site to deal with the Philadelphia case, Percival's scrutiny boiled down to daily verbal reports and a hell of a lot of reading—watching specific cases so closely was always a careful weighing of priorities, and there was no way Congress would accept that _this_ was the sort of case that exposed the ugliest rot in an Auror department. 

It meant longer hours, and constant catching up, but Aurors who were unbothered by killing animals in the execution of their duties weren't far from finding it acceptable to kill no-maj. And that made horse-thievery one of the most important things on his desk. 

Delgato manning the morning's drills gave him an hour to catch up with the reports, if his leg would consent to quiet its screaming now that he was seated, at least enough to understand the words on the page. Even pulling his case notes closer, moving gingerly, earned him an angry jolt from his knee. 

He stared at them, blinking until his vision stopped blurring the way it did when the remnants of the blindfold hex got triggered by pain. When his own handwriting started to come clear, he scanned the notes quickly to reacquaint himself.

For three days now, Weiss and O'Sullivan had been hand-holding the Philadelphia team through tracking down _how_ the damned-expensive flying beasts had ended up in a city park, and the ripped-apart picture was slowly beginning to show a little clearer. 

The racehorses had been hustled off a farm somewhere near Coatesville, Pennsylvania, some forty miles outside of Philadelphia; Fairmount was as far as the thieves had gotten before the horses wouldn't go any further in the dark. The owner had reported the theft via Floo hours before Scamander even had them all safely stowed. 

He paused, flipped through the case notes— the owner was Jack Breuster, described as an older man, middling height and lean, shabby jacket and worn boots, no hat over salt-and-pepper hair, gold band on his left hand. The farm had received one citation for ineffective repelling charms, more than a decade back, which had come to naught. 

Ah--and _that_ was why the name seemed familiar: Breuster had married a Pearson, Miranda. Not one of the Twelve, but a sister line that had consistently borne powerful land-singers.

Well. Powerful and terribly wealthy, which amounted to much the same thing.

Hmm.

Whoever they were, the thieves hadn’t been particularly prepared for their task: the hobbles and headstalls they had used to tie the creatures in a hidden part of the park had been inexpertly applied, and most transfigured from a rags bin. The horses’ innate magicks had nullified the spells — rather, if Scamander’s theories were accurate, had in fact _absorbed_ the magic in the spells. 

As if that wasn't a delightfully unsettling detail to mull over. 

In any case, the ropes had stood little chance of holding the animals — and it was only luck that some sharp-eyed, wand-carrying neighbor had been foraging potions materials in the pre-dawn mist, and had thought to contact someone about the problem. 

Weiss had already flipped that stone, he found, even as the question raised its metaphorical head— nothing more illicit that a few caldrons' worth of low-powered lust potions and an accent that was thicker than the borscht Weiss had been obliged to partake of to shore up community ties after the witch had nearly fainted to have a MACUSA auror darkening her stoop.

No wonder Delgato was whining.

There had been aurors on the scene within thirty minutes of the tip, to spend a good deal of time floundering about in the knee-deep mud. The clock had ticked over into the red sometime around the second hour, when one of the notice-me-not spells had failed, and needed to be shored up.

Scamander had arrived in his bullpen around eleven in the morning, and was on-site just before noon. They were down into the yellows again by twelve-fifteen. 

He hadn’t entirely simplified things. Percival had a towering stack of papers attesting to that, so with a fresh cup of coffee and a grudging half-dose of the potion the healers kept pressing on him, he dived into the bulkier full reports.

The extant still-trailing ropes had apparently incensed Graves’ newly deputized magizoologist; Scamander had evidently muttered about the sorts of terrible injuries that sort of nonsense could bestow while shedding his brightly colored outerwear and diving into the case for supplies. Not a minute later, he'd left O'Sullivan standing next to his case and took off at a lope toward the creatures with his own rope tucked over one shoulder and a foil roll of no-maj candies in his hand.

And when he had jogged back, with one beastie prancing willingly beside him, and the others following, he'd insisted on very carefully checking each of the horses in the bright spring sunlight before taking them one by one into his case.

Effective, was the word O'Sullivan had allowed in his write-up.

Well, the day an Englishman drew overt praise from O'Sullivan could be penciled in alongside the ending of the world, or an immediate trip to Medical for a head injury. Reluctant respect was a high mark indeed.

Scamander had pressed three junior aurors--and O’Sullivan, for a while--into helping to hold the jigging creatures as he caught them, and apparently gave quite the impromptu lecture while he worked. 

The whole process had taken hours -- one man, managing more than a dozen flighty animals, in a muddy wreck of a field with minimal assistance. 

And it hadn't been shortened by Auror efforts, the three juniors non-withstanding: the officer in charge of the case on the Philadelphia side of things hadn’t been the one to suggest terminating the animals, but seemed an unpleasant fellow nonetheless. Impatient, and decidedly undiplomatic.

There had been an incident: Auror Butler had tried to hurry the magizoologist. When Scamander hadn’t complied--had apparently glanced up from checking hooves the size of a bread plate and said 'no, thank you', and Circe, Percival could only imagine how that had gone, because Weiss described it as _polite_ , and O'Sullivan didn't believe in that sort of embellishment--he’d ordered the juniors to stun the creatures and tried to remand the case into police custody. 

And missed, plowing a nasty furrow into the soft dirt, spraying soil all around. And had nearly been kicked in the face in the scuffle, when the colt nearest the case had reared and flared its wings wide while Scamander’s attention was on regaining his feet and making _sure_ he’d missed. 

The junior — Jones, Isaac Jones — holding the horse had hung on, and earned a dislocated shoulder for his bravery. Given that the horses were shod in steel, it probably saved Butler’s life, and possibly Scamander’s as well. O’Sullivan had stunned Butler himself a moment later, under the cover of chaos.

The remainder of the horses still loose had scattered. Not far, but far enough. Hours more work; no wonder he'd still been muddy when Percival had knocked in his case at half-past seven.

It turned out that Scamander’s medical knowledge extended to settling shoulders back into place — he'd handed O'Sullivan the colt's rope once it's feet seemed inclined to stay on the ground and seen to the shoulder before anyone else had even finished reacting. After Percival's morning, it didn't come as a surprise that he was a dab hand at it. Evidently, Jones had barely yelped.

O’Sullivan’s reports were always gruff; Weiss’s were plenty detailed, but neither gave a time frame for exactly how long Butler had been left stunned on his back in the mud. Some rearrangement of available hands and spooked creatures must have happened, and it seemed likely the specific horse in question had been hustled into the safety of the case.

However it happened, when O'Sullivan had gotten around to reviving Butler, Scamander had offered one additional surprise: a bawling out worthy of any veteran drill sergeant, but delivered with such cutting precision that it hadn't taken more than a minute to leave the auror looking bloodless and sullen, and everyone within earshot silent and embarrassed to be associated with the man. He'd fled the scene not long after, leaving one of the high-ranked juniors ostensibly in charge. 

There hadn't been any further incident that day, but as Percival had already surmised, catching and checking the rest of the horses had taken a great deal of time. The next steps were clear — write ups and transcriptions for any interviews, a play to flush the thieves for questioning, solidifying motive and benefit. He'd have updates on those plans by the end of the day today.

The complaints from the Philadelphia aurors— Auror Butler, his direct commander, _and_ the Philly chief had all had written complaints on his desk by the following afternoon--and they were quite loud, as he read them now, about the disruption of a _civilian_ disrupting an investigation and the damage to morale that came of said civilian reading a riot act to an officer in public. Wouldn’t he _do_ something about it?

He set them aside, for later. 

Scamander himself had said nothing about it over dinner, after O'Sullivan had delivered him back--in fairness, Percival hadn't asked, beyond exchanging pleasantries and making sure he was alright after the long day. They’d managed a few spates of conversation over a late supper--dragons, what awaited in South America, an inquiry after the health of the Niffler after her ordeal--and said goodnight at the establishment’s door. Scamander had offered a report the next day that was remarkably bare-boned and to the point, barely a page. 

Percival had raised his eyebrows again and sketched a thank you. He read it again now, brows tugged in a slight frown. Not much to be gleaned; the language stiff and plain and nearly meaningless.

He flipped the page, on the off chance there was anything — and was rewarded:

A packet, handwritten and shrunken; footnotes. Footnotes jammed with all the detail he could have wanted from the report and more. Scamander's analysis of the animals and their care, of the situation, the approximate contents of the famous chewing out, transcribed nearly word for word, and a list of background resources nearly a hands’-width long, a bibliography of scholarly resources that he’d drawn on for the analysis and background knowledge.

His hour was more than up when he put the report aside--Mrs. Colon was going to beat him 'round the head with his own schedule if he didn't get a move on, and deservedly if he didn't finish the reading for the meeting with his Canadian counterpart, but there was a smile playing around his lips as he picked up the next round of reports. 

He still hadn’t managed to quell the smile on his face when he finally got around to writing a reply to the Philadelphia chief later in the day, though he did put in the effort to school his response to something a bit more politick than merely ‘no’.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ah, we're in the mysterious realms of narrative discovery, where even I don't know what's happening. I guess we'll find out. This might take a while. Either way, this series ends happily and with porn.
> 
> This chapter fought me, and is still fighting me, so I'm putting it here in time-out so that the next one can have some attention for a change. Don't be startled if it gets edited.

There was something rotten in the state of Pennsylvania--well, that was perhaps unfair to Pittsburgh, but they had fewer than fifty wizarding families, and a grand total of twelve officers and oversight from the Cleveland contingent. And Harrisburg only had Wellington Octavious, a mad old bat of a man, who only made trouble every few years and could usually be reasoned with.

Philadelphia was past due for some stricter oversight — they’d been too quiet for too long, and within the larger machinations of the case, Weiss and O’Sullivan were playing it close to the chest. 

_What you're telling me_ , he wrote with considered patience, lifting a hand from the ache behind his temple to scrawl it out, _is that you would like to pull a bait and switch._

O'Sullivan dipped a nod.

The plan O'Sullivan had laid out was simple: lay a trap, baited with the animals that had been stolen in the first place, and snap it shut when the thieves tried to strike again.

Simple. But far from easy: their targets were not just the thieves, but also the aurors who had taken bribes to allow it and more to look away. It risked the animals, and the man who cared for them, as well as those who were springing the trap. It risked friendly fire from the not-so-friendly, and all the dangers of kicking a hornets nest just lit aflame.

He shook his head and startled himself with the hum of it in his throat, “No.” 

O’Sullivan startled as well, shifting, and Percival frowned at the paper he was already writing on.

_Yes, to the bait. No to the switch. I want the rot cut out, not covered over._

He considered a moment longer.

_How's your transfiguration?_

"A, er. A good attempt," Newt allowed, and flinched when the winged transfiguration creature shifted in a grossly unnatural way. 

He was their expert, after all — it only made sense for him to stand as judge for the impromptu spell roundel the transfiguration research had turned into when it had proved slow going. They had switched over to working in one of the smaller training halls, ranging in a raggedy circle. Aurors and some of the support staff would wander in for a few tries or to call out a suggestion and then drift away again, back to their more pressing duties or on their way home as the work day drew closed, while O’Sullivan and the Director took on the bulk of the iteration. Periodically, when the figures got too monstrous and unnatural, they paused, and Newt would bring the quietest of the creatures up out of the case to provide some inspiration. 

O'Sullivan swore under-breath, hardly audible over the soft chatter from their audience, and dropped the spell, making the mug tumble toward the ground.

Percival saved it with a casual flick of his wrist, since it was his turn to have another go, and no one else had stepped up with an idea. 

Ceramics were taking the magic better than most other materials — leather had fought it terribly and wood worse, and the smell still lingered on the air from where attempting with paper had burst the entire stack of it into purple flames. But transfiguration was more art than science, and the magic wanted a good base for the sort of complexity and longevity they needed to adequately convince someone to take the bait. 

He guided the mug down contemplatively, and shifted to re-balance himself with the support of his cane, to lift his wand. Shifted again automatically at the biting twinge of protest shot up his side from his knee, and channeled power into form, thinking of shape and color and movement and--

"Quality," he mused, at the first feel of the energy twisting against his direction. He eased, to let the magic build him a very different creature; winged and large still, but tired-eyed, with ears that rivaled it's tucked wings for an ability to catch the breeze. The coffee mug had given him a quiet bay mule, skinny-ribbed, lazy-hipped, and hanging its head, flicking its tail at flies that didn't exist.

“We’re going to need better china,” he decided, turning his attention back to O’Sullivan— and looked up to catch a variety of gobsmacked expressions instead.

His throat had tightened before he even fully understood what had earned him those expressions.

It was — irritating, was the easiest word. It was irritating because he could speak. It was easier, when he didn’t need to consider it, when he was distracted, when he was immersed. But he _could_ force it, sometimes, and he gave them every word he could choke out, but when this—

It must look intentional, was all he could think, and that held a sickly curl of shame. To speak so easily and with so little consequence now, when he so often had to resort to written notes and hand signals to speak directly, to any of them… how could it look anything but cowardly or cruel?  
  
“That’s all,” he gritted out into the dragging silence, and dropped the magic holding the mule when he noticed it flickering with his distraction. Which jolted most of the room a second time and wrapped even more hard pressure around his throat as he watched his aurors cast about at their fellows and shuffle uneasily for the door. 

“I’ll, er — head over to Wexler’s before they close up,” O’Sullivan offered over the noise, the set of his shoulders showing his discomfort where his face never would. “See what they’ve got for good china.”

_No need_ , he thought, and made a staying gesture--the halt command, and a hasty curl of his fingers to beg a minute. He needed the time to sort the cane and his wand and shaking hands and angry knee before he could write anything to clarify, to try and swallow the choking feeling— needed the near-empty room another minute would give him more than he’d ever admit.

He wrote fast, once he had himself approximately roped back together, and it made his penmanship spiky and more spark-fire than the thin inky shadow he usually used for writing in the air, but there was little help for it, not if he wanted to put O’Sullivan at ease, and sweet Circe’s lips, Scamander was still-- 

Present, and watching with an unreadable expression and something odd in his posture. 

_I'll take care of the china._

“It’s no trouble,” O'Sullivan replied, and already his shoulders were easing. Back to business. “But the pawnshops are closing soon.”

_Don’t deprive me of an opportunity to lighten my load of hideous heirlooms, John. I’ll take care of it. You’re meant to be back in Philadelphia tonight, aren’t you? You’ll need to get dinner, and update Weiss._

"We were going to debrief over a meal, sir." O'Sullivan said. “There’s the owner interview tomorrow, and we were going to start spreading that you were sending the beasts back down contingent upon him being cleared.”

Percival nodded. _Good; that will do nicely. I’ll send word once we’ve ironed out the transfigurations, and we’ll see about making sure whoever brings them down is convincing enough._

“For, er. Verisimilitude. You should send me,” Scamander said, and drew two sets of blinking auror eyes. “I can help tweak the transfigurations with disillusionment spells if they get odd.”

“Are you out of your mind?” O’Sullivan asked, and Percival felt a flash of gratitude to him for putting voice to it. 

_I’m not sending a civilian into a possible firefight._

“Er, presumably your goal is to prevent a firefight altogether?” Newt said. “If your targets figure out they’ve been tricked because the horses aren’t right, someone will get hurt. If I do it, the horses will be right, and you’ll have an extra auror for your other preparations.” 

“You know,” O’Sullivan said, and Percival hated the considering note in O’Sullivan’s voice, immediately and with passion. “If we did use him, it wouldn’t be odd to have a guard. More hands, more wands to keep the transfiguration going.”

_Civilian_ , he wrote, gritting his teeth against the throb of a fresh headache. _You want to send him undercover, into a possible firefight?_

“It wouldn’t be the first,” Scamander offered with a shrug. “Are American horse-thieves somehow worse than parts-poachers and smugglers?”

“He held his own last time,” O’Sullivan said, very quietly. “It isn’t a bad idea.”

It wasn’t quite like getting doused with a bucketful of cold water, because he’d known that. He had read all of the reports, several times a piece. Half of them, he’d read sitting in a hospital bed. 

And he had no business having an emotion about any of that, not as Director, so it would have to wait until later. Headache and all.

“Sir—”

He held O’Sullivan off with another ‘one minute’ gesture.

Objectively, if he put aside the automatic gut-clench rejection, it wasn’t _that_ bad of an idea. O’Sullivan was right: if anyone had a right to be trusted sight unseen with potential danger, Scamander had a better claim than most. He had proved himself before a solid contingent of senior aurors and the President herself under decidedly suboptimal circumstances, and had an international record of getting out of the scraps he got into gracefully enough. 

It wasn’t a _good_ idea — Scamander might have shown his mettle against Grindelwald, but he wasn’t trained with them, didn’t know an entire host of things that Percival would have insisted a junior know before getting within sniffing distance of this sort of case, starting with communication standards and ending with no fewer than a full gamut of dueling trials. There was a vast difference between staying alive and evading capture as an individual or even as part of a ragtag group, and pulling in tandem with a team. He was also a foreign citizen, and one with close ties to the Ministry and Hogwarts at that. Damaging him was not really an option.

But. He was an entity known to Philadelphia already, and known to be trusted with the animals. After a suitably pointed reply to Philadelphia’s complaints, there would be no more hare-brained attempts to control him or the case, not from aurors who were acting in good faith. The aurors not acting in good faith wouldn't be as suspicious if a civilian consultant was involved. And he did know the creatures, far better than anyone else, and dueled well enough under pressure that a dozen different aurors had attested to his ability months ago. And his presence would allow for a number of Percival’s own aurors to accompany him without raising questions.

This wasn’t the sort of work Percival had envisioned for a creatures’ department, but that was something else that would have to be put aside until he had a chance to think it through. Perhaps chaos was the natural outcome of courting a dragon-rider into a job.

_I will take it under consideration,_ he allowed. _O’Sullivan, back to your partner. Start telling it around that the horses are coming back down after the interview. I want a recording of that, by the way._

“You got it, boss.”

_Safe travels_ , he wrote, and O’Sullivan took his leave.

“Is this when you shout at me, then?” Newt asked, when the door had thumped shut. “Or, er. Whatever?”

Percival looked up from tucking his wand away in its holster by his ribs. He tilted his head curiously, and slowly shook his head. Drew his wand again, since it didn’t seem he was finished with it.

_Seems counterproductive_ , he wrote. _You haven’t done anything that requires shouting._

“Seems like the sort of things most aurors get, er. Shouty about. In my experience. Or. More shouty, anyway.”

_If I shouted every time someone suggested something I take issue with, I’d never do anything else,_ Percival scrawled, and bent carefully to pick up the coffee mug off the floor. _Besides. Can’t shout now anyway._

“I don’t imagine you’d allow that to stop you, if the situation, hmm, warranted," Newt said, and offered an awkward half-laugh. His body language was different again, easier and not so still. "I’m, um. I'm glad to hear it isn’t, though.”

Percival wasn't entirely sure what to make of that. _I don't often find the situation warrants shouting. Any situation. If that's...something you're concerned about._

"Oh," Newt managed. "Really?"

_It isn't exactly good for morale,_ he wrote, and rearranged himself to shake out his hands. Writing in the air was somehow more taxing than writing on paper.

"You. You're actually going to consider it," Newt said, and the surprise in his voice drew Percival's attention back. "Er--sending me, with the tea-cup horses."

Ah, that was what this was about. Percival nodded. _I am. We can discuss it further after dinner, if you're still comfortable with my invitation. Or tomorrow, if you'd rather not._

"Sorry--I didn't mean to make you write more. I'll, um. I gladly accept your invitation."

He smiled, and if it was a bit warmer than he'd intended, well. At least it prompted a real-looking smile back. _I need about twenty minutes to settle things here, then we can go._

"Oh, yes. Absolutely--I, take your time."

There was no military hand-signal he knew for 'thank you', but. One bowed at the conclusion of a dance or a duel to thank a partner for their time, and the gesture of it put a pleased gleam in Newt's smile.

Come to think of it, it was a creature gesture, too -- hippogriffs, or perhaps griffons. 

"Oh, no--thank _you_."


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Edited to correct some clothing details. 
> 
> Now that we're well into the weeds, let's roll around a bit in it, hmm?
> 
> In light of recent events -- Ms. Rowling's unacceptable behavior and beliefs, and the entire situation with the murder of George Floyd and the responses to the protesters, as well as the continued police killings of BIPOC people, let's clarify a few things: 
> 
> Black Lives Matter. Trans Lives Matter. TERFs ain't welcome. There isn't any such thing as a 'blue' life: police-work is work, is a profession. A profession built on protection of property against undesirables, particularly. And bigotry in any form is despicable. 
> 
> Now. This is a work of fiction, and it portrays law-enforcement officers in a sympathetic light that is factually incorrect in its representation of what police work involves, and its purpose. This work also portrays forms of resource-hoarding and social interactions that are both canonical to the Harry Potter world and are reprehensible, in universe and more-so in reality. I cannot separate the HP universe from Rowling's beliefs or viewpoints; I can still engage in some of the fantasy that the HP fantasy offers. 
> 
> I make no money from this work, and accept none. If my writing touches you in any way, please donate to your local bail fund, queer support organization, or food bank.

Twenty minutes had been more akin to thirty-five when all had been said and done--between last minute reports and a schedule that changed every time he looked away from it, there was always something that needed more attention than he had time to give, and his knee had long-since rejected hurrying of any sort, which only made the walk longer--that he was able to at last limp out to find Scamander waiting patiently, carefully writing notes in a battered travel ledger.

Percival _had_ remembered to scoop up the scratch-paper pad he used for his fastest notes, along with his coat--though Newt seemed determined not to let him use it, waving off an apology before Percival had half-written it and seemingly perfectly content with a pantomimed invitation to Side-Along.

He was probably owed a second apology, since halting at the gates of the Graves House to manage the wards was not exactly the welcome Percival might have offered a guest a year ago, and the changes to security he’d made since moving back to the family home were less than completely polite. But at least the day’s light wasn’t completely gone, even if it was half-past-seven when they arrived at the gates, and with the sun filtering through from the horizon the woods were lovely, gilded and new green where they weren’t flowering still. And Newt nodded just as graciously to his one-moment gesture as he had to the other difficulties of the day, glancing around with appreciation while the wards learned him.

The House itself, visible on the hill at the far end of the drive through the woods, was lit up inside like they were celebrating Beltane again this week, every window blazing. He didn’t leave lights burning for himself; it would be Eily and Kit’s work. His mother’s beloved nanny, and her equally beloved gardener, had followed her all the way across the water -- and outlived her and his father both by nearly a decade now. They'd just as likely outlive him as well. House elves lived _long_ lives, especially in houses as happy as his parents had kept. 

Well. They quite nearly had. 

He offered Newt his arm again, to apparate to the house--the walk was lovely on a spring evening, but it would be nothing short of torment today. And Newt had waited long enough for him.

"It's, um, a lovely house," Newt said, and he seemed both earnest and wary of it. "I'm--not exactly dressed for it."

A soft bark of a laugh surprised Percival in escaping. "It's— unacceptably massive, for a single man and a small family. My grandfather hoped for a dynasty." He coughed--words were a terrible tickle in the back of his throat sometimes, and found he had at least a few more for now. A marvel, really, after the emotional blow of earlier, still waiting to be picked apart and set to rest. 

"I don't— ah, stand much on ceremony at home. I may need to ask your patience for tonight's supper, but it is informal. Come in your shirtsleeves if it pleases you, or we'll find you a dinner jacket. There's no dress code. I hope you'll do what is most comfortable for you, and your creatures."

Newt darted a glance at him. "Your, um. Staff? Or, guests— Are they—hmm." He paused for a long minute, Percival intrigued to be on the other side of wordless struggle for the first time in a long while. "My Niffler is. Really, terribly unruly. I'll be sure she doesn't keep anything she might take, but are they likely to hurt her, if she surprises them? I. I can completely contain her, if her life is at stake, but."

Percival tilted his head a bit, considering, while he fit the key to the lock on the door, tapping ward knots as he went. "There isn't anything dangerous or breakable that isn't already tucked away. She’s quite safe, and welcome to roam. Kit and Eily have young children, and child house-elves are very small. If you’ve tamer creatures that need it, that won’t pose any danger, I don’t mind if they come out with supervision. Ah—" 

More coughing took him; the price of not stretching his vocal cords, probably, and then demanding a marathon from them. It took a long moment to shoo the moth-wings feeling from his throat. "Eily— may have different feelings on the matter, and Kit is very proud of the rear garden,” he murmured, when the coughing subsided, and twisted the handle open. “Allow me to inquire before you set any of them loose."

Newt was staring when he turned, and that wasn't going the help, not when he twitched a bit when Percival spoke again— he forced down a crawling sensation of loss, the slithery sort of tightening that was going to tie up his ability to push sound past his own damn lips if he let Newt's expression spark his own nerve-tangled shame, and made his voice feel tight and painful. "Welcome to Graves House, Mr. Scamander." 

“I— are you quite serious? That’s— Thank you,” he stumbled, and followed the words with the motion, through the threshold into the foyer. He looked...boyish, wide-eyed and tousle-haired. No, not boyish. Disbelieving. 

“You, you are joking, aren’t you? About— letting me. Letting them. That's a joke.”

 _Disarmed_ , that was the word Percival was after. 

Perhaps it wasn’t that Scamander was surprised _that_ he spoke--his eyes didn’t flick uncertainly the way some did, automatically checking for damage or magic. Didn’t hold a guilt that he hadn’t earned, or pity masked by concern, buried under the surprise. Surprised, but by _what_ Percival spoke.

Well, that was an entirely different matter. Other people, people he didn’t know and didn’t owe anything to, their shame didn’t stopper his words. Whatever acts of cruelty had made Scamander so unsure of repeatedly offered welcome should have some shame attached to it, he thought. 

“Not as such,” Percival replied with a careful expression, and gave a gesture for Newt to give over his coat. Whatever magic it was that Newt had, that eased the words out of their aching knot behind his ribs, he’d indulge it as long as he could.

“Oh--thank you. Here now, Pickett, come on--I. You’re _quite_ sure?”

Pickett was a bowtruckle. Of course he was; trust a dragon-riding lunatic to befriend a walking lockpick, and carry it about in his coat pocket, through the streets of New York and Philadelphia. Percival watched Pickett clamber over Scamander's arm, up to hide in his hair and peep out distrustfully at him. 

Fascinating. He could think of a dozen wizards who would give their right arms for a bowtruckle, who wouldn’t hesitate to put Scamander down like a dog for the little creature, just off the top of his head.

 _Circe’s pigs_ , that was going to take some careful managing.

“Have you got any other creatures in your pockets?”

“No, I. Ah--actually,” Newt managed, taking back his coat while a sort of panic flitted across his face, and tossed through far too many pockets to produce some strange little ball of a beast. It was without any determinably living features, sitting scaly and soft-looking in the palm of his hand. “She--she should definitely stay in the case.”

Percival raised his eyebrows in polite inquiry.

“Ah--are you familiar with, uh — the Peruvian _mal que vuela_?”

He shook his head, interested to see what Newt was dodging around. Percival’s Spanish was far from adequate, but enough to know that Newt held a creature named the 'evil of something' in his hand.

“Now, she’s really, ah, quite harmless.”

“Newt,” Percival prodded. The day Newt Scamander broke the habit of that reflexive lie would be something indeed. 

“Right. Well, she’s what’s called a Swooping Evil, but, ah, not to worry, I’ve worked out the trick to feeding her, and they only hunt, oh, every two weeks or so.”

Ah. 

“The flying creature you threw at Grindlewald’s head.” Percival slid the blue coat, at last safely creatureless, over a hanger and tucked it into the coatroom closet. Kit and Eily were apparently holding to Company Manners, and wouldn’t be seen until he ushered Newt in for supper at the bell, or near enough. "Goldstein mentioned she eats primary brain tissue."

“Er, yes, yes, that’s— uh. Her.”

“I’d like to see her fly sometime,” he decided, shedding his own coat, and out of the suit jacket for good measure, damn the conventions of polite society, with movements carefully calibrated to stay centered over the good leg until he could get his fingers around the cane’s head again. Falling a second time today would leave him useless with pain for the rest of the week. “If it won’t cause any harm.”

“I-um. Um. Perhaps—”

Percival cocked his head, waiting. Stripping to waistcoat and shirt-sleeves might have been a bit... abrupt.

"Um. I usually spend some time, after they've had the evening meal. Socializing the ones who will stay in human contact, doing a last check on, er, any injuries. You could join me, if you wanted."

Percival smiled, and nodded.

  
  


The dinner bell— wielded with an enthusiasm that said the honor of its use had been granted to the smallest of hands — sparkled through the house a precise twenty minutes after Percival had shown Newt to the best guest-room and left him there to take a moment to unpack or freshen up if he chose. 

Feeling fresher for having stolen a moment himself, to hang up the jacket properly and toss the cufflinks and collar pins back in their little bowl on his dresser, and another few for rolling back his flopping cuffs and dragging a wet comb through his hair to strip away most of the product, Percival had beaten the dinner call down the stairs. He'd even managed it with a relative minimum of cursing, juggling cane and a dinner jacket he'd snagged, that still sat too loose on him, in case his guest was feeling more formal than bared wrists allowed.

Two of the words had even been out-loud. On the worst days, he had to sit half-way down the stair or risk falling, and there weren't any words at all, swallowed up by the muddy aching haze of loathing. 

“Don’t let your Nan catch you repeating me,” he muttered to the giggles that were emanating from under the bench he was sat on, tucked to the side of the grand staircase. They only intensified behind his legs, with unholy glee. Only Todd was really old enough to relish any of them, but the younger two, at four and five, would surely get him in trouble.

“And _which_ words were those, Percival Malory Dandraine Graves?”

“Shoot,” he deadpanned, and angled a charming sideways smile that was only a little too tight at Eily, who stood arms akimbo and hands propped on the gingham of her company day dress, half-hidden by the ruffles of her apron. “Blast. Oh, criminey.”

“It’s a liar you are, Percy my lad, a silver-tongued devil, and a liar. Go on with you, now, shoo,” she ordered her little ones. “First to Granda gets to do the bell, go on.”

Three streaks of energy and ears zipped out, beelining for the kitchens, leaving a hush behind them.

To his mind, Eily and Kit had quite earned their quiet years to do as they pleased--when his father had been gone two months, nearly a decade ago, he had finally asked them what it was they wanted to do. The house might be tied to his blood and the family money, but it was theirs, the only home they’d ever chosen to know in America, and his life was in the city. He’d have given them anything they needed, if they had wanted to leave it, and equally anything they wanted within his power if they stayed. That had earned a scoff and a cheek-pinch: ridiculous lad, of course we’re staying. 

And the quiet had suited for a while--with their own children long-grown and happily settled well before Percvial had even left home for school, and his work in the city, they had quiet in spades. The first years of it had pleased them greatly — the garden had never been so impressive, nor the larder so bursting with preserves, more than any of them could eat in a lifetime, more than Eily could foist on friends, so much that the local no-maj orphanage hadn’t wanted for sweets for some time. He’d come for dinner no less than once a week, just as the rest of their brood did, and determinedly fought his blushes to watch the outrageous flirting.

When the quiet had stopped pleasing them, the house ringing empty instead of warmly private, they told him they were going to do right by an orphan, whose parents they had known. Keep the old house a home, a happy one. The next time he’d visited, there was a baby delighted to be dandled and an angry-eyed teen with the boat tickets still in hand to win over. 

Phillipa was doing well, going on seven years out of the house. Had a young man who’d come ‘round a few weeks ago. Too soon yet for Percival to be introduced, by far, but Eily had a good feeling about the lad. The youngest had come as infants, one not long after the other, so small that Norah had fit in one of his hands like a kitten, while Tomas’s favorite thing had been to be tucked up into his scarf, which he’d given over to do duty as a baby sling for nearly a year. Now they were bigger, all huge-eyed and squeaky giggles, and kept the Graves House from becoming a mausoleum. Usually despite him.

“ _Lots_ of words from you today, Percy. Your gentleman’s doing?”

He smiled reflexively at the sly note in her voice, almost drowned under the silver of the bell. “His own gentleman, not mine."

"Well, go on, use those words for something. Who's our guest?" 

"He’s a magizoologist, Newton Scamander. Helping with a case, and if I can swing it, staying on for a bit.”

“Oooh, Scamanders’ a good family, too. Their Carrie was my mum’s cousin --you know, the one from _that_ side of the sea. This was before you were born, of course, but his father got into all manner of nonsense as a boy.”

“Runs to type, then — this one rode dragons in the war, and he’s —" one cough, barely a tickle. Still irritating. "He's got a suitcase full of creatures. And a Niffler who may peruse the silverware if you’ll agree to have her out.”

“A Niffler, hm?” She smiled, a thousand precious folds around the same wicked grin as her little ones gave. “I like them just fine--drove your mother’s father spare, they did, and he deserved it. They don’t do any harm--just like the shiny stuff. The only silver out is the cutlery, and it’s not the best. If you don’t mind, I don’t.”

“I’ll not, ah, let her keep anything, ma’am. She’s good-natured, really, aside from the thievery. There’s, um. Also a Demiguise,” Newt said, trotting down the stairs with an ease that Percival certainly didn’t envy him, his own jacket shed in favor of sleeves and waistcoat, and hair somehow even more wild. “Dougal’s fond of wandering as well. If that’s allowable.”

“Eily,” Percival murmured, “may I introduce Mr. Newton Scamander? Mr. Scamander, this is Eily.”

"A pleasure, ma'am. Your house is a, um. A credit to you."

It wasn’t hard to please Eily, but that did it beautifully, earning a proper blush and the suggestion of what might have been a curtsy, a quarter-century ago. "Thank you, Mr. Scamander, we’re very proud of it. Welcome.”

“Are both of you seeing to us, Eily?” Percival murmured, steeling himself against an evening of teasing and gentle prying. Guests outside the family were a rarity — gentleman guests, alone and come to stay, were a novelty. He'd earned some teasing, probably.

“No, no,” she allowed. “Wouldn’t be proper, I suppose--you'll dress properly for that, my lad, when it comes. Go on now, Kit’s got everything all nicely done up. He’ll fuss if it goes cold, and the youngsters ought to be headed for bed. You go on.”

“I--I hope I haven’t disturbed the household too much,” Newt murmured, as they shooed. “Or chased them from their dinners?”

“No. They’re— Eily and Kit are traditionalists, in some things, and not, in others.”

“I--don’t follow, I’m afraid.”

“You didn’t grow up with house elves?” Odd, _very_ odd; the Scamanders were his mother's very distant cousins, on the other side of the Blacks. He couldn't recall if the Scamanders were or weren't in the silly bloodline compendium, but he knew servants were as _de rigor_ in those circles as they were in the upper crust of the American wizarding world, and half the old families still thought their elves were bound by blood magic to the grounds of the stately homes.

“Ah, no — my mother breeds hippogriffs, has since I was, er. Old enough to walk. Well, nearly. My father, ah. Didn’t care to risk any accidents, and dismissed them with references. Nippy and Dobson joined the Black family. And, er. The Hogwarts elves are wonderful, but they’re, er. Not supposed to mingle with students. So, er. Traditional?”

Ah.

He nodded, to show he’d heard, and wondered how to explain. 

“As you aren’t family, or not close family, inviting them to eat with us would be...rather the declaration. Being invited to eat with them would be their blessing.”

“Oh! Well. I see.”

  
  
Kit had been the one to save his life in the hospital. _Please_ , he’d written, when the potions had faded enough to let him string the letters together, even if his hands still shook. _I can’t stand it_

Eily had asked him to bear it, asked him to trust the healers and their potions. _They’re making you well again, Percy, please,_ she’d asked. _Just a little longer._

Desperation and terror and fury had been crawling through his veins, choking his breath and itching under his skin when he had ducked his head in agreement and known that if he saw dawn it would be despite himself. He’d resigned himself in that moment, to causing more heartache, to failing, to giving up, because he couldn’t any longer, couldn’t bear what they were asking of him. Had known he ought to have died in Grindelwald’s little cell, rather than live just long enough to make it worse.

And had known he’d rather choke on his own blood than let one more potion drag him back into the hellish little space in the back of his own head. Had known the next healer to raise a wand to coerce him into taking a potion was going to have to immobilize him for it, again, as the last one had. 

Had known that he’d rather let petrificus kill him than suffer that, let it crush his lungs until his heart failed in his chest for want of oxygen.

Potions or not, spells or not, plain rope and padded cuffs or not, the next person to trap him was going to be the last. He'd vowed it, if only to himself.

Meals and potions came every six hours: six am, noon, six pm, midnight. He had pressed his lips to Eily’s cheek goodbye at half-past two, shook Kit’s hand and hugged him. And had let the elves go with all the smile he could muster and a shaky wave. By quarter-past three, he’d calmed enough to lift his pen again.

By four he had been as ready as anyone might be, steeled against the hysteria boiling away in his belly, with a letter folded neatly under his pillows. He had watched the winter shadows grow long across the floor and refused to look at the door when it opened.

Kit had brought him his clothes, brought his grandfather’s cane. Brought his razor, and soap, and scissors to fix his hair, and done the work himself, garden-rough hands as steady as a surgeon’s and slow as treacle to help him bear them, voice carrying twice the lilt Eily or his mother’s ever had, and as soothing as it had been when he had been a boy. 

_Don’t rightly know what we’re gonna do about your flat, my lad,_ he’d murmured. _He didn’t break anything, I don’t think, and there’s no traps. But the air feels foul._

It had been quarter to six when he had sat shaking in his own too-loose, worn-soft suit, torn between a great and terrible gratitude, and terror, and wrote his thanks in a steady hand. 

It had the best, the most real, he’d felt physically in weeks.

But a haircut and a shave wouldn’t have saved him, and he’d known it. The comfort of his own clothes, even the ones half a decade out of style pulled from the cedar chest, wouldn’t have saved him. Wouldn’t have kept petrificus from stripping away everything that was left of him, wouldn’t have stopped the potions from knotting his belly or shredding his ability to differentiate real from unreal.

 _Haven’t seen you so frightened since you went off to war_ , Kit had observed. 

“Are you standing out there all night, or coming for supper?” Kit asked.

He startled, and might have stumbled but for Newt’s hand curling around his elbow.

“Mr. Graves?”

Kit had torn through the patient wards like it had been nothing, like the magical scream of them hadn’t been blaring loud and then gone eerie silent as he tore away that as well, his kindly face sterner than Percival could ever remember seeing it. _Get your head straight, my lad_ , he’d said over the distant sound of a healer shouting, and caught Percival’s face in two hands that were terribly strong for their size, kissed Percival’s cheeks in much the way his father had in times of emotion. _However you need. You’ll call me when you need me, when you're ready, and home we’ll go_. 

And had let him whirl away, escape. 

He shook himself, relying for an unasked moment on Newt Scamander’s surprising strength before he managed to get his balance. “Sorry,” he gritted, another moment later, trying to quell the bitter flavor of failure as language left him, as capricious as it had come.

“Nothing to apologize for,” Newt allowed, and tucked his arm neatly through Percival’s. “Ready?”

He nodded.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always, thank you for reading


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I... somehow, this Wednesday I've been writing has been going on for multiple chapters, and they still haven't seen a damned animal. The niffler is losing her edge and so am I.
> 
> That said, my extreme dislike for Rappaport comes to the fore, because I have lots of feelings as a human being, and most of them are anger. We'll come back to that. This is your reminder: this is a work of fiction; also, there are are no good cops in a corrupt system.
> 
> Minor warning for the suggestion of canon-typical violence and manipulative behavior. Major warnings for Percival and Newt both stripped to shirt-sleeves, and the suggestion that they washed dishes together. Scandalous, I know.
> 
> Note: the ASL sign for apologies is a fist (specifically the letter 'a', so a fist held up, fingers toward the signer) in the center of one's chest, circled clockwise. The signal they use below is not ASL standard.

Supper was— quiet. Quieter than anyone had anticipated.

Not quite so unbearable as Percival had feared, though.

Never quite so stubborn about social convention as his wife, Kit had allowed himself to be begged off in a way the Eily would never have permitted, which mostly meant that the modest structure of the dinner courses was entirely forgone: little dishes holding a pair of oysters and a warmed dinner roll sitting neatly beside each modest cup of soup, their dinner plates giving home to not only the stuffed squash and the chateau potatoes, but also the squab, and the mashed peas, and the asparagus salad, saving nearly a dozen plates from needing a wash between them.

And being quite comfortably dressed down, in shirtsleeves and waistcoats, cuffs rolled back, it was little trouble to save Kit the effort of serving-- which freed him to recapture the little one who had escaped from the bath trailing giggles and bubbles. 

The food was no less delicious for the lack of formality.

He’d even extracted a promise from Kit to let him wash the dishes the had used, a guest bedamned — _his_ hands didn’t act up in the hot soapy water that was needed for the few dishes that had been made magick-proof, and neither Eily or Kit could claim that. 

And Newt — well, Newt proved himself again: exactly as patient and flexible as he had been with every new complication thus far.

They’d seated themselves catty-cornered at the table, so Percival had the slightest hope of being a good host in between bites, scribbling and signing when their shared repertoire allowed it.

_So exactly how does one become a Magizoologist?_

“Oh, er. I, ah— well. I mentioned my mother’s hippogryphs. I spent a, er. A great deal of time. Outside. As a boy. Made friends with the creatures in the woods, when they’d let me. The, ah. Habit stuck, I suppose— our, um, our Magical Creatures class at Hogwarts. Professor Kettleburn is. An eager fellow. A, er. Excellent teacher, and a good friend.”

_And then the dragons._

“And then the dragons, yes. And, er. A number of other sorts of creatures. We never should have touched them. I did — an apprenticeship, of sorts, after. A, ah--a population study for unicorns in Wales, among other things. Completed my studies at Hogwarts through correspondence. And then. Well, the Ministry. Until the book trip.” 

_Will you tell me about your travels?_

Newt spoke fleetingly of well-more than a dozen countries, between gratifyingly eager bites and compliments to Kit and Eily’s efforts. Then acknowledge half again that, when he allowed that one might still consider Europe to be travel, even from England. Griffins in Algiers, a misplaced Thunderbird in Egypt, Denu in the French Alps, poppy-imps and heartbreak in Sudan, a karkadann in Persia displaced by the upheaval--dozens of animals needing safe harbor as their lands disappeared and the people who knew them best found themselves inextricably bound up in the machines of war and imperialist greed…

"--colorful puffskeins, nearly, here in New York," he murmured, tilting a nervous look up from under his hair. 

_And another Obscurial_ , Percival prompted, as gentle as black ink on paper could be. The hardest question of an interview was always the most telling, but it didn't do to drag it out too much after them— and he wanted to see, what sort of questions Newt Scamander was willing to ask.

He nodded, a sharp jerk of a nod. "I had hoped he might have survived it," Newt confessed, and pulled away from his plate enough to fidget with his napkin, wiping clean fingers cleaner. “But if he did, there was little sign of him. A _terrible_ \--you know, I don’t think I’ve ever... failed, so badly, and by such--such a narrow margin. Did you know the boy?"

 _No_ , Percival wrote. _I knew of him; we keep Scourers like the Second Salemers under close watch. Mary Lou Barebone had quite a talent for finding orphaned magical children. But those three never pinged before Grindelwald made his move._

"You couldn't help? Oh—” distress crossed his face immediately, and he tossed up a hand, the same staying gesture Percival often used now, “No, I'm sorry. I know better than that. I apologize, I, I shouldn't have said—"

He lifted a hand of his own to pause the stumble of apologies, shook his head to them. That was a better question than he'd expected, even from Newt Scamander.

_You have a right to know. There isn’t anything to apologize for — someone should have explained when your wand was registered. And you certainly should have been debriefed, after all you’ve done for us._

_Legally, there is nothing we can do for no-maj children. Or no-maj of any age._

_Improper interaction, anything more than what is absolutely necessary, is forbidden. Violating Rappaport is a snapped wand at best._

“A-- _really?_ Why would--? Aurors and the Wizengamot enforce the Statue of Secrecy, in England. You don’t have, er. Discretion?”

He shook his head.

_We operate under it--Aurors, Healers, all of us. Rappaport’s Law isn’t the Statute— it’s tied to Congress, and magically to the Wand Registry. It’s quite the process, to get an exception or an acquittal. Only exception is squibs who've sworn an Unbreakable Vow, and their children aren't eligible unless they prove magic._

_‘Barebone’ isn’t an unfamiliar name to us. Bartholomew Barebone — a great grandfather, I believe— nearly exposed us, 120 years ago. Emily Rappaport put an end to any interaction between no-maj and wizards then._

Percival paused, and wrote again.

_We Obliviated her once._

“That--the Barebone woman? I. Um. Can you...you can tell me this?”

He smiled, a bit. Another excellent question.

_Yes. She’s dead, you were never debriefed properly after Grindelwald, your contract binds you to an appropriate level of confidentiality. I can tell you._

“Ah, fair enough. Director,” Newt agreed, with a rueful half-smile and worry in his brows; and ducked agreement again.

_Barebone had a talent, as I said. She’d adopted at least three magical children--Credence making three. It’s policy that Aurors collect children born to no-maj, since it can go badly._

“That’s—” Newt stopped. The frown between his eyebrows shifted, deepened away from mere worry. “Hmm.”

 _Very,_ he agreed, feeling the wryness crawl onto his face, quirk his lips. _One of my last cases as a Senior Auror was collecting the second one she’d come across: this child was wizarding born, and had known what she was before Barebone adopted her. That Barebone was a foul parent placed aside, she should never have been there. Nearly broke down the door herself when we came._

_We left the other kids asleep, since Obliviation would have left them even more vulnerable to abuse._

"Thank Merlin you did-- I can't imagine what Obliviation would have done to an Obscurial." 

_It made Barebone worse._

_Obliviation does, sometimes. Worse and more determined, so repeating the Obliviation was out of the question._

_That said_ , he continued, and there was that wry-quirk feeling again, almost sly as he shifted to set aside his water glass before his elbow took it — _there's some parts of town that are quite useful spots for teaching our Juniors the standard repair spells and brushing up on their summoning and manifestation. Congress takes no issues with fireproofing and no-harm wards in multi-wizard areas, either._

"Multi-wizard areas,” Newt repeated aloud, and glanced up, startled humor visible in his face, easing that frown away. “I see. Are they--er. Residential or commercial zones?"

Percival smiled, very well-pleased. _Neither--it’s roughly based on the annual census data we collect, and auror observation during the usual rounds. Those are under Auror discretion._

_They won't stop everything, obviously, but it's difficult to break a bone or starve under those wards, and we practice manipulation with clothes, primarily--winter wear. It isn't much, but no Auror has any business being a bad neighbor._

“That sounds...It seems rather as if you don’t entirely, ah. Agree with. Er, Rappaport, was it?”

He sat back, let the smile take his face entirely, only a little too fierce for polite company, and found a sufficiently non-committal hum in the back of his throat.

_Would you care for dessert, Mr. Scamander, before we see to your creatures?_

  
  
  


With the dishes finished in double-time and an extra ginger biscuit--as Newt referred to them--apiece turning to delicious crumbs in their pockets, Percival watched Newt disappear into the narrow dark of his case. He took a moment, to shrink his cane to the size of a pen and tuck it beside his wand in the holster, then gritted his teeth, and followed.

Stairs were awful--all stairs were, no matter how spacious and gentle. The case’s stairs were neither spacious nor gentle, and he was panting by the time he’d cleared half, only enough to be able to duck find himself in a cramped workshop- _cum_ -labratory- _cum_ -camp bed, soft light coming through the dust-clouded windows.

“Sorry, sorry--I forgot how bad those were. Do--would you like a hand?”

A hand. 

What a terrible idea, to be touched, when the way was tight and dark and his knee would rather punish him than bend enough to get down the rest.

He considered, and nodded at last, against all good sense and the clamour of frenzied nerves. Tried to quell his own flinch when Newt moved, and nearly managed to quell the second one, as Newt paused visibly, slowed the speed with which he reached to offer some stability.

“If I brace against the stair, you could--like a stair rail. And you’re--of course you’re welcome to sit, or, whatever you need.”

It certainly wasn’t a graceful process, and likely he was going to apparate back out, if such a thing was possible with the wards he could feel--but he had feet on the wooden planks of the floor, and he was standing on them, and Newt hadn’t let him fall. And being touched didn’t seem quite so terrible, now that it was happening: he had a careful grip at Newt’s bicep, while Newt’s hand still braced him at the ribs as he fished out his cane and wand. 

He stilled. Grindelwald had dealt his days in bachelor’s rooms in the city a triple blow — the final blow, the one he didn’t know he’d ever fully recover from the horror of, was having learned that Grindelwald had tried very hard to come a-calling while Percival was...unavailable, and only the blood magic in the land wards had repelled him. 

But the others, the ones that lingered just as surely, the ones that had rendered his home of nearly two decades in the city frankly unlivable, with the stench of dark magic fouling them, that feeling of the walls-- walls and ceilings that had been quite generously spaced--dragged in tight—

The magic that was crawling up his spine now, tightening every muscle and standing every hair on end was not quite that poison-sludge feeling.

He didn’t quite know what it was he was feeling— it felt more like being electrocuted than smothered, a thousand static shocks prickling over his skin — and turned his eyes up to Newt’s without daring to let go of him despite a strong instinctive drive to put a great deal of space between them. Whatever it might be, it would be enough to take his knees straight from under him, if he so much as swayed wrong.

 _Report_ , he signed sharply, and left off any softening gesture.

“ _Ah_ \--it’s, it’s not dangerous. Not, not everyone, er, feels that. It’s. Well. It’s my creatures, all the magic of them. The wards contain it, or, er, they do now, so it’s not so noticeable outside, and I swear, most people don’t feel it at all--I--it’s a resonance. If you’re used to picking out threads of magic, instead of feeling it as a stream, it’s--it’s a bit. Jarring--most people do one or the other, but obviously most people feel it altogether, and it’s just sort of euphoric that way, so the wards are tweaked to ease--I. I’m--terribly sorry, that I didn’t think to warn you.” 

He breathed carefully, and moved only enough to get his wand into his hand, as much for the comfort of it as anything. It was decades of practice that kept sparks from flying when his hands remembered another set of signs: _hostile? numbers?_

“Wh-N-- _No_ , no-- _none_. No, there isn’t--they aren’t _dangerous_ \--not any more than _you_ are to _them!_ ”

Silence hadn’t taken sarcasm from him--there were a dozen things he could offer to that, if only military signs weren’t so utilitarian. He didn’t even need to see what creatures Newt had in particular, not when half the magic screamed predator and the other rumbled with the weight and size of the creatures, the danger of things too big not to be sensibly afraid.

But that was real, desperate fear in Newt’s face so suddenly, bristling him up like a frightened cat, abruptly trying to fill all the space between his creatures and a potentially reactive auror with his shoulders. He seemed to be trying equally hard not to move an inch, arm still solid beneath Percival’s grip and his hand still firm and flat on Percival’s ribs, to help him balance without grabbing at him.

As a stalwart human barrier, Newt did a very good job of it, Percival decided. Particularly since _Percival_ wasn’t the one with a wand aimed at him; he holstered it carefully, and took the cane instead. Unshrunk it with a thought and a press of magic that made his gut clench angrily.

He thought for a moment, eyeing Newt, who was eyeing him back. Three days was too little time for trust, and yet each of them had trusted the other with precious things, and with the normal, boring necessary things. So.

An apology was due, if only to clear the air, but drawing his wand again to write it was right out--

Percival bowed, a little thing, made somewhat less graceful since they were still holding onto one another, but a proper bow from the waist, tipping his shoulders forwards as much as his head.

"I--I don't understand. Should I—”

 _No_ , he shook his head, and signed 'stay', softened it with the sweep of his hand that had come to mean 'please', or 'if you like'.

"I'll wait," Newt agreed, his brows showing worry, but the fear was draining from his face.

Carefully, utilizing the cane for all it was on the wrong side, he let go of Newt, to press his hand over his heart, and bowed again. 

If a bow was thanks, could it also be apology and regret?

"Ah... Hippogriffs bow in welcome, in truce. Humans bow for….respect, er, thanks. Um. Loyalty. But that's not…."

He bowed a bit deeper, but had to stop when his knee threatened to wobble, and he straightened slowly, willing Newt to be brilliant. He'd never had much interest in charades or other parlour games, and it bit at him now.

"I— are you apologizing?"

 _Yes_ , he nodded.

"The--hand on your heart for apologies, and the bow was for thanks, earlier, so--forgiveness? Have I got it right?

Yes, he nodded, and broke it down to repeat. _My apologies_ , said the hand at his heart. _Forgive me_ , he continued, dipping forward.

"I--yes, of course. I'm sorry to have startled you."

 _Thank you_ , he signed, no hand at his chest. And then he let his hand drop, to brush a careful, polite touch over the hand that _still_ held him steady. The bow was shallower here, no less appreciative but not so heavy, without regret. _Thank you_.

"Of--of course."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading!


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Once again, I have failed to escape the never-ending Wednesday night. At some point, I promise, we will get back to the actual plot, but for now, we are apparently trapped in the perpetual Wednesday Hell.

No maj zoos were depressing things, or at least the one in Central Park was — smooth mud-colored concrete, chosen for its ease in cleaning, and thick steel bars between the watchers and the watched, pacing their cells.

Smugglers and potions-parts peddlers were worse, though, often by several orders of magnitude. And often they sat in just such a carrying device as Newt's— not often so battered, but just as subtle, just as intensely warded. 

Goldstein’s report had said Newt’s case was not anything like that, that the animals were well cared-for and contained beyond all reasonable expectations, and she’d reasserted that assurance again to him when she gave her verbal report, on the off-chance that the younger Scamander ever stumbled back into their country. 

Percival had agreed to take her at her word--enough, at least, that _checking_ looked friendly, like this: invited and escorted by the man who had built it himself, having the shyer inhabitants of the place pointed out with a soft voice at his ear and a long arm coming up into his eyeline to point; rather than with brute force and a handful of aurors at his back.

He was glad for it. Bursting in here wouldn't have been difficult — the wards were thick and electric but fine like the warp and weft of a wool sweater instead of the standard brick-like defensive wards — but the consequences would have been harsh, and more destructive than he would have been happy with.

He was fiercely glad to find Goldstein's judgement had been sound in this.

This was...

A few of the wealthiest Founding families kept menageries, carefully permitted and heavily monitored for any hint of potential exposure — the Burtons liked the bright feathers of African song-birds, flitting silently through the trees in their solarium, the Garridos had their small herd of fiercely guarded re'em, and the Harnell family raised enfields for their best hunting hounds. Those spaces, scattered about the country, tended to be fairly spectacular — glass and greenery hiding the large golden cages, sprawling mountain pastures with fences standing taller than him, huge cushy pillows beside a fire in a hunting lodge with kennels so beautifully appointed that it would be no hardship to lodge there instead of in their guest rooms.

None of them, but _none_ of them, had managed the splendor that rolled out before him now, a pink-washed sky brilliant over his head and the scent of summer greenery and fresh water all around on a breeze that stirred the tall grass. A prairie of sorts--like none he’d ever seen, none that existed in the United States— stretched as far as the eye could be fooled in front of him, the dark shapes he assumed were the winged racehorses, head-down and munching industriously. Thick forest chattered with the sounds of life off to his right, and desert stretched red and shimmering in the fast-fading heat of dying sunlight far off to his left. There were barriers between the different environments--modified wards, carving through the magic of it like shimmering rivers, thrumming a soft surussus of ‘ _stay-roamnot-wantfornaught-safe-stay_ ’, woven into the painted canvas that held the illusion.

Even the lean-to of the workshop was unexpected, as he turned to look--much smaller habitats used the structure for support, or floated nearby--some literally, some only appearing that way as he realized there was a hillock beneath the building’s foundation, providing space for still more shelters--a grove of trees with Bowtruckles peeking warily out at the stranger in their midst, a tiered series of spaces that was half-muck pit and half compost bin that had the largest beetles Percival had ever seen rolling dung into balls, another alcove with a hammock and two nests--one of leaves, high up in the taller tree, the other an improbably large protrusion, stuffed to the brim with shiny trinkets. It took peering closer to realize there was a little creature in there at all, the Niffler’s dark fur surrounded by glitter.

He was going to need to re-write some of those permits, and perhaps petition for an entirely new subclass of beast-keeping licensure. If one man could build this... If that man could be convinced to teach others--

“Mr. Scamander," he rasped, and it seemed the trick of earlier, the warmth and quiet wonder of Newt's presence, of the magic swirling around him, wasn't going to be quite enough for easy speech. But that was alright—this more than deserved the effort. Doubly, for the ugly little scene in the laboratory. "I am... quite thoroughly impressed.

He turned to look up, just that little bit, at Newt, and was startled to find him flushed pink and ducking from the praise.

“I--um. There’s--a few of them still need dinner. I. You can--if you’d like, you’re welcome to join me, and I’ll, er, introduce you as I go, or, or if you’d rather, if you, er, need, there’s a comfortable chair.”

He considered, fighting down a smile at the blush on Newt’s cheeks, and held up one finger.

“The--first option?”

Percival nodded, and frowned in further contemplation before weaving his hand through the air and then lifting two fingers.

“Something...and then the second option, the chair. Er--hm. Should I take that to be, you’ll let me know if you need it?”

 _Yes_ , he nodded again, more emphatically. He was pushing the knee entirely too hard today, he knew--and he’d pay for it tomorrow, and likely the day after as well, but in his defense, who _wouldn’t_ want to see?

And it earned such a dazzling smile, too--the whole of Newt’s face lit up in delight at the opportunity to show off his creatures.

“Just--so, this,” Newt repeated the gesture back to him, “Is something like ‘if something changes’ or ‘down the line’. For if circumstances change, or you anticipate needing something?”

 _Yes_ , he agreed, and silently blessed Newt's willingness and agility, following Percival so readily off into the weeds of what signals he remembered. _Thank you_.

"I--well. You're, um, quite welcome, of course. Now, the mooncalves get supplements in the evening with their biscuits, the erumpent needs a top-up for hay and water to keep her happy until i can get the aquifer in her habitat sorted, and the new batch of occamies will be starting to cheep, and that'll set off the older bunch."

The tour was always going to have been abbreviated — even cane in hand and the offer of Newt’s support wasn’t quite enough to keep him up, after a full day and nearly falling on it so early that morning. But he was pleased help as he could, to float a small train of buckets to a small watering hole, and watch Newt haul hay, a bale floating beside him and another hauled over his shoulder, chatting happily about the creature--his erumpent, a growing smudge of grey ambling over from a goodly distance away, was called Phyllis, and she was apparently a sweet creature, if you respected her boundaries. Her boundaries, Percival was given to understand, were at least twenty-five feet of distance outside of her heats, when they were a great deal wider unless you happened to be an appropriately virile male erumpent--or a particularly unlucky hippopotamus.

The mooncalves were sweet as well--Newt called them his darlings, and Percival could understand, even as unnerving as their giant eyes and uncomfortably small mouths were, they were terribly sweet. Very soft under his hands, curious and smiling--and entirely too cuddly, since a particularly friendly one half-knocked him down, butting a huge head against him for more pets so forcefully that he staggered. 

And then there wasn’t much else for it but to to perch trembling on the chair Newt had offered, waiting for the fuss to die down, another ice-cold cloth over his knee and the bold mooncalf nibbling at his hair instead of the supplements Newt kept trying to interest her in while Percival worked on continuing to breathe. Summoning the chair had spooked the herd into milling about in a mild panic, bleating pitifully until Newt stopped fussing over him and went to fuss over them instead.

The Niffler put in an appearance just as he'd come down from thin gasps to carefully measured breaths, slinking up to investigate while Newt's back was turned to check the hoof of a limping mooncalf.

Percival's pocket watch was briefly of great interest--oof, that was a later hour than he'd like, with crockery still to track down— but she deemed it entirely too much trouble when he scruffed her gently away from getting zapped by the theft charms, and dug one of the plain cufflinks out of his pocket to offer instead. That prompted a chittering noise and great interest in being petted a bit.

"You'll never be free of her now, after letting her play with that," Newt warned, coming back to tickle long fingers through fine dark fur. "They can track magic embedded in precious metals for miles, you know."

He shrugged and nodded. There were worse fates than a fixated Niffler, and this one was well-fed, pleased to be petted, and exquisitely soft under his fingers--a particularly fine distraction from the ache pulsing through him.

"How's, er, the knee, now?"

Percival shrugged again — he wasn't screaming and he wasn't begging for death, so it certainly could be worse. But he also wasn't going to be able to walk the distance to the stairs unaided without it delving to those depths, much less get up them, until the teeth-jarring pain eased.

"I--I really am terribly sorry, I ought—"

He held up a hand, already shaking his head. He'd been forewarned--Newt had rhapsodized as readily about the mooncalves as he had about Phyllis the erumpent, and Percival had chosen to come in closer than the edges of the mooncalf habitat. It wasn't anyone else's fault that he'd let himself be surrounded by curious creatures, or been jostled by the same.

"I can offer a rather nice whisky, actual ice for that, or a Side-Along back to the foyer, if any of those would make things, er. Immediately better. Or… you're quite welcome to stay here as long as you like, and we can see how things, hmm, progress?"

Four fingers he held up, and then two. With a smile that he knew didn't quite escape grimace, he gave the 'later' signal and then lifted one finger, but shook his head.

"Sit a spell and ice, I can do. A drink later...but. No...something. Not whisky? I might still have sherry my brother gifted me, but--that's a no, alright. Ah— are you a teetotaler, Mr. Graves?"

It wasn't really a nod, because that wasn't quite the answer. Moving carefully, he gestured to his wand for permission.

"Yes, of course--I'm very sorry, I didn't mean to silence you, of course you may—"

 _Thank you_ , he signed as much as he was able. Shifting enough to bow properly wasn't really an option. _I drink,_ he wrote in smoky shadows that shook faintly with the tremors of his hand _, but not for that. Not pain relief. Happy to share one, but._

“Not for that,” Newt finished as he wrote. Newt blinked at him for a quiet moment, wearing an expression Percival couldn't quite put a name to, something measuring and soft. "I can put on tea?"

 _Tea would be lovely. If I can get this blasted thing to cooperate, I haven't forgotten the horses, or your Swooping Evil._

"You— ah. You're welcome to come back tomorrow. I mean. That is to say— I'd be very pleased to show you. And it can be tonight, if you're up for it, but. It can. Be tomorrow, if you'd rather."

It was easier to lift his hand, sign four and then ‘later’, then it was to write, but he added _If that’s alright?_ to the end, and sheathed his wand. Using magic when he was this shaky always felt a bit dangerous, like any wobble would be the end of him. It wouldn't, of course— he'd been many times worser off than this, had been to the mud and smoke of war, and could still feel the racking ache of _petificus totalis_ if he foolishly let himself dwell; a little wobble would hardly slow him down if he needed.

But he didn't _need_ , and it was a relief to sheath it and trust that Newt Scamander was willing to play charades.

“Yes, of course it is. Let me see to ice and tea, and perhaps the occamies, and we’ll see, hm? Just— you needn’t let her nibble you, if you mind. Nennette’s just--yes, you, go on with you, shoo! You can just push her away.”

He lifted a hand in a gesture for peace, and found it in himself to murmur: “she’s fine,” as the insistent nudge of a muzzle knocked against his head again, the strange tickle of mobile lips mussing his hair.

It was very odd, but it wasn’t terrible. The expression on Newt's face as he went--half-ducked away, but soft and smiling--was similarly strange and pleasant.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always, thank you for your patience.


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We aren't getting anywhere fast, but merrily we'll plod along, I guess. This is functionally two chapters, but I've smashed it into one longer one in order to escape the hell of this many-chapters-long Wednesday. Warning for the discussion of the use of pain-killers, and the use of prescribed narcotics.

Two cups of tea later, with a lingering damp patch on his trousers from the ice and a purring Niffler happily curled up around his cufflinks in an Expanded pocket of his waistcoat, Percival was leaning carefully against one of the sparse cottonwoods in Newt’s prairie biome, watching a pared down re-enactment of Newt loping off to gather the herd. 

It was an odd gait on him--the faint bow of his legs and the sudden straightening of neck and shoulders, all the awkward corners of him set to jangling. But the length of him meant that each of his strides ate the distance with enviable ease, and he was quicker with it than plenty of the more graceful runners Percival knew. 

He jogged off _sans_ rope this time, promising it wouldn't take a minute. And it certainly didn’t appear he needed it, since he came jogging back with fifteen horses gamboling behind him, looking sleek and gorgeous and a bit like the young ducks that frequented Central Park, flapping their massive wings about, catching enough of a downstroke to make some of the frolicking really quite impressive. 

Percival had a city wizard's appreciation for horses of any sort, which was to say he preferred them well outside of biting or spooking range, and not to be the first thing he saw at close range just out of an apparation. He liked them well enough under those conditions, liked them better still when they were unflappable the way the old cart ponies were, who had seen it all and kept wizarding secrets with their calm.

These creatures didn't meet any of those conditions, and pretty beasts or not — and they were, he could admit, sleek and liquid-eyed and dancing for the joy of breathing — he wasn't especially keen on making an exception. He hurt enough without adding a dusty hoofprint to his troubles.

"They'll settle in just a moment," Newt promised, his tone soft but carrying clearly. His body language had changed again as he moved through the knot of bodies, making his way back over slowly; true to his word, the horses were settling to it, calming enough to nudge at him for a quick pet or scratch before dropping their noses back to the thick carpet of grass.

He ought to be studying them closely — how they moved, how they interacted with a competent handler, with each other, the sound and smell of them, all of it needed for the illusions to fool a human eye. Even if Newt or one of his aurors were only seen with a few of the animals, they had to be individual and convincing enough to fool the thieves.

He ought to be. He didn’t especially want to explore why his attention was lingering on the ease with which their keeper moved with them, instead.

"A few… details. Might, hmm— before we discuss, er, teacups."

Percival nodded, and shifted carefully to ease the twang of muscles trying to lock up. It was comfortably warm in this part of the case, more akin to a Midwest high summer evening than a late spring night in New York, but May had never used to be cold to him before either, and this year he’d been clinging to the heavier coat for far longer than he ever had. 

Eily would have lit at least one fire upstairs, if only in the kitchen to help warm the bathwater for the little ones. There’d be plenty left over for a hot water bottle. That was something to be grateful for--Morgana’s mercy, he was getting terribly old, wasn’t he?

"Hm. I-- I’ve quite exhausted you, haven’t I?” Newt asked, coming level with him beneath the cottonwood, the edge of his observation keen for all its darting quality.

Well. Principle made Percival shake his head, even if there was something rueful tugging at his smile.

"A few, er. Details, as I said, that may help you decide how I, er. Fit into your plan, for these lovelies. Yes?"

He nodded, shifted again as a muscle spasmed, and watched Newt shift as well, the unfurling of that something indefinable, which seemed to pour liquid steel into Newt Scamander's limbs and stole away the softness of the scientist, the gentleman caretaker, and left behind the dragon tamer who had flown violence incarnate into the maw of war.

The dichotomy was just a bit breathtaking.

"This case can be left, hm, largely autonomous, for about three days without any problems whatsoever. With regular infusions of fresh water, fresh grain and plant matter, and fresh meat, it can self-regulate for more, a bit, just a bit more than a month, though an expert would be needed to do health checks. The wards can be locked to the wartime correspondence standards my old flight unit kept, though that's—” he had the nerve to smile a bit more widely as Percival’s eyebrows winged up. 

“It'll leave me a bit winded by the end of the week to ward off someone really determined, but it does quite well for most. It's keyed to my brother if I can't return to open it. If you ask, I can, ah, key it to you or someone you trust implicitly, while I’m engaged with your department. Unauthorized entry shifts the entry point and locks down the enclosures — the only breach of that I've ever had has been Gellert Grindelwald, and the protocols have been altered and strengthened since then. I can, er. I can also engage a recall spell, which will side-along anything holding my coat, boots, or wand back to the case after two days. Er, forty-eight hours exactly."

It took Percival several more too-hard heartbeats spent staring to realize that the syrupy aching feeling curling out from his belly was slow-motion arousal. It was massively inappropriate, a mere half-step away from being a terrible violation of Newt's dignity, hinged tenuously upon signs even silence wouldn't hide, that a trained observer would recognize quickly enough… and it was also somehow the most reasonable response he could think of. After all that. 

"I think," he rasped, and found he'd caught the full weight of Newt's gaze, blue-grey in the fading false daylight. "You've vastly understated your qualifications, Mr. Scamander."

His chest ached from the ferocity of his heartbeat when Newt’s little smile tilted toward a grin. "My average apparation time was last clocked at five-point-naught-seven seconds for fifteen jumps across a cricket field and back. That was last year, but I'm, hmm, reasonably sure that time has improved."

Percival blinked, and could only thank the knife-blade ache in his knee for the fact that he wasn't embarrassing himself. A decade ago, fuck, five years ago, maybe less, his trousers would have been quite the mess and his knees wouldn't have been trembling from injury but eagerness. There wasn't much that was more attractive than competence, but to pair that with a grin that hovered somewhere between shy and sly--

It coalesced abruptly, a thought fully-formed:

They'd been _flirting_ with one another. For three days.

Or, at least, he's been responding as if Newt was flirting--it isn't impossible to suppose that Newt's kindness and patience were more innate than romantic, but _he_ had undeniably been flirting back.

It was vaguely surprising, somehow, to recognize his own behavior at such a remove--causal courtship wasn't the sort of thing that had ever been a reflex or anything less than calculated and intentional. 

Dishes, he thought, wondering if he was likely to wake up back in a hospital ward, or his own bed, having dreamed it all up. He'd gone to dinner in shirt-sleeves and let a guest help him wash dishes. Eily likely thought he'd lost his mind. By most accounts, Theseus Scamander was well within his rights to come after him for a declaration. A decade ago--

A decade ago, he wasn't Director, and he'd only known Newt Scamander as a colleague's kid brother, who had probably not come back from the mud and blood of the East Front and was like hundreds of other boys in having been entirely too young to die.

"MACUSA consultants get tested for the field," is what he managed, when he could reasonably trust himself to force out the correct words. "Tomorrow," he added.

"Tomorrow," Newt agreed affably enough, and offered an arm to assist with the short walk back to the workshop. He tried not to shudder, accepting it.

Newt paused them again, not a dozen feet from the door, and moved slowly until he was quite certain Percival was well-balanced, searching Percival's face in his usual darting glances until he was assured of his stability. Percival's skin ached, a sensation he thought he'd successfully ignored into oblivion flaring hard back to life. "Er, you mentioned--only, this is the perfect amount of light for her, and her usual perch is close enough for a recall, so you can see--"

Wings. 

Large enough to be an eagle and utterly unlike any bird Percival had ever seen, unfurling from that decent handful of a cocoon into a mossy-looking nightmare trimmed in sapphire blue as Newt gave her a bit of a toss and she swooped up to a nearby tree. She latched onto the tree, wings folding into careful tucks as she scaled up it with two hooked claws at the ends of them. Her head was uncomfortably skull-like for a living animal, though the angle showed it to be at least partially an illusion of coloring. Those teeth were quite real though, and no less impressive for their backdrop of camouflaging scales that hid the muscles making them effective. 

Newt gave a soft whistle that made her pause--when he pitched it higher she flung herself off the tree again, flapping twice to regain height, and dove toward the magizoologist. He fetched her up on his upraised arm like a falconer, the flare of wings banking the strike and framing Newt’s mess of copper hair against brilliant blue for a heartbeat, while she snapped vicious jaws closed around whatever dead thing it was that Newt so calmly offered her.

She settled in quickly to enjoy her treat, folding small around Newt's arm to manage it.

They hadn't settled on a proper sign for polite questioning--it flashed through his mind that he ought to, that the report signal was a crude bit of work that didn't soften well, even with the please gesture, and he wanted something that wasn't nearly so abrupt. Mostly, he stared.

“Would — if you’d like to touch her, she’s, er, surprisingly amenable while she’s eating. On her back, gently, yes—”

The two steps it took to reach Newt’s side were teeth-achingly painful, but even that pain was worth it, to pretend for a moment longer that he hadn't realized himself, that he wouldn't need to go back to being a professional who would have to temper all the fascination and pleasure of Newt Scamander and his case of wonders back to the more objective scales of risk and benefit, to lift up duty again.

But in this moment? In this moment, the _mal que vuela_ was by turns feathery and snake-scale slick under his fingers, and Newt was telling him about her ability to absorb both drinking water and ambient magic through the mossy protofeathers he was stroking.

-8-8-8-8-8-

  
  
"You are _not_ to be doing that again, Mr. Scamander, until he has you introduced to the wards _properly_ ," Eily announced in her most imperious tone from the sitting room threshold, and if Percival had the breath and the fortitude, he might have risked claiming the blame for the shocking crack and shivering ripple of the wards reacting to Newt's Side-Along out of the case. 

But breathing was a soft stuttering hiss through teeth clenched enough that it spiked pain up through his jaw and cheekbone, and the fortitude was needed to stay standing. He didn't entirely understand how a Side-Along could have aggravated the knee so badly. It was--if it had been knives in the case, then it was an icepick outside it, dulled and white-hot. His breath choked in his lungs as he swayed gently, his intent to soothe the wards had slicked from his head along with a dozen heartbeats' worth of thought.

"I am sorry, ma'am— it wasn't my intention to wake your little ones or disturb the house. I'm afraid I've, er, overtaxed the limits of his knee rather badly," Newt apologized, shifting his weight to help Percival turn a rapidly buckling knee into a step toward a chair.

He cursed aloud, startled to be _moved_ , to overbalance and brace every muscle against the pain of falling, and then _not_ ; not to the ground or even against a tangle of limbs, but into a chair that had been a body-length or more away. The clatter of the cane on the ground was twice as loud as it ought to have been.

"Sorry, sorry-- _very_ overtaxed, I _am_ sorry, I should have given that— a great deal more thought. Is there a Healer you call to the house?"

"No," Eily said, reappearing with a pop like the bubbles on a simmer pot, with a much reviled bottle in hand, and he hadn't seen her go. "He won't have them here for himself, and wizards don't treat elf ailments. This is for the pain--perhaps he'll take it if you ask."

Not gladly, but he'd take anything including a smart crack to the temple if it pried the metaphorical steel bar out of his leg.

"Oh--little wonder he hates it, this is mostly opium suspended in spirits. Hardly magical at all. Percival?"

He nodded, both to show he was listening and to accept the potion. He could feel the blood in his teeth ache with every heartbeat, the twisted spike of furious nerves— it was bad enough that he had to force his eyes open, force himself to see past the pressing darkness of looming unconsciousness— he'd panic if he couldn't see who was hurting him, and might do it anyway if he didn't manage to breathe a little deeper. He lasted long enough to find worried faces and the wood paneling of the wall before they clenched closed again without his permission.

A hand touched his, which felt like the sparks thrown when a hammer smashed into white-hot metal, moved to where he could cling to it--it felt strong enough that he wasn’t likely to break fragile bones or bruise crepey skin. _His_ grip was definitely too tight, desperate, but Newt didn't flinch.

"One squeeze for yes, two for no. Otherwise, grip as hard as you like, and try to spare your teeth. Alright?"

He squeezed, still trying to pull in enough air, and tried to flex his jaw, to spare his teeth. If he had smelled piss and rot and mud, he’d have hexed the man who _hadn’t_ given him a strap to bite, since a tooth infection was an even stupider way to die than gangrene, but home smelled different. One didn’t chew through a strap in a drawing room that smelled of Kit’s garden and the hot iron of a woodstove that Eily only kept burning in May for his sake.

"I don't have anything more effective for you than this, except more ice, which you may have as much of as you like," Newt spoke quickly, steady and calm and without tripping even once, but fast enough that Percival didn’t try to answer, not yet. "I wouldn't presume to know better what you need than your Healer, either. But you told me you didn't want alcohol for pain. The other thing I can offer now is a Somnus, and Ms. Eily and I will see you safely to bed. Options, are you ready? Tell me all that you're alright with."

He squeezed once for the potion.

Once again for Somnus, though his hand shook in Newt's grip enough that Newt had to have noticed.

Twice for ice— if he got any colder neither the potion nor Somnus would be needed, because he'd panic himself into a faint—

And twice for waiting it out. 

An _emphatic_ twice for calling a Healer.

"Potion first, and if it doesn't help in twenty minutes, I'll take you down for an hour exactly, and then we'll see. If there are complications of any sort, I _will_ call a MACUSA medic. Alright, or something different?"

 _Yes_ , he squeezed, and had to wait barely a breath before there was a cup tilting to his lips. 

"Ten drops, mixed in water," Newt murmured, confirming the dosage as he sipped.

It should have rankled something fierce, to be fed a potion that tasted of bitterness and cheap vodka and the distinct aftertaste of Aguamenti water, to have no hand on the glass--should have been wildly disconcerting, how many times Newt Scamander had seen him hurting and vulnerable in this single day. He was usually far more circumspect about how much weakness he would permit anyone to witness, much less how much aid he would permit offered.

To be fair--he was usually entirely more sensible about how much pain he’d permit himself to suffer before he bowed to the inevitable need for relief. He'd been terribly unwise today.

Worth it, he decided, as the Niffler poked her head out of his expanded pocket to investigate and accept her due in petting fingers, and the slow spinning feeling of the laudanum made it easier to close his eyes against the dizziness he hated. Worse to have shied away for fear of the pain. Perhaps he’d not feel so brave about it tomorrow, but that was tomorrow’s problem.

“Oh, she's with you still--I didn’t realize. Hello, rascal.”

“So this is the little scamp, hmm?” He felt Eily lean closer, the scent of soap and herbs folded up in the soft creases of her dress, a comfort and an oily prod at his belly, only barely the right side of too much. Her fingers joined his in the Niffler's fur, the little creature flopping down to make the most of it. His petting was choppy, more twitches of his fingers than actual strokes, and he only dared because Newt's hand was still tight in his other grip. "She's quite got your number, hasn't she, Percy?"

“She’s taken quite a shine to him," Newt murmured, and Percival could practically feel the weight of his gaze, wondered distantly if it was battlefield direct still or starting to dart in peeks and glances as he settled back down. "I hope she hasn't been a bother this evening."

Percival tipped his head faintly in the negative without opening his eyes, even as Eily chuckled at the notion.

"He's a notoriously soft touch, our lad. Used to levitate birds’ nests back into trees as a boy, and brought home more half-drowned kittens than you could imagine. Won't keep a kneazle now, though, says it wouldn't be fair with his hours—"

He huffed slightly, and knew it wasn't going to be enough to stop her from pouring out all the inconsequential details that would paint him as marriageable. Not when he was what he was, and Newt the first proper guest in over a decade, who was handsome and charming and kind as well--and unattached, and just the sort that would hold his attention.

He'd doomed himself, offering Newt a place to stay. Eily would never let him have peace on this subject again. He’d never been under any particular illusions of being master of his own house, not in anything but name—Eily and Kit had raised him as much as his parents had, the same as they had raised his mother. They had always made mild protests about being servants—a tendency that had once for an entire year driven his mild-mannered father to doubling their wages every time he heard it, it had so irritated him—but retired or not, they were the only living family Percival had that was dear enough to earn the name, and there was no escaping the trials of that, nor the dear comforts. 

Thank--all the gods and forebears of his mother, and the same of his father, for their young children, whose antics and needs kept him from smothering. He’d drown under the weight of their care, else.

But it remained: he'd be hearing about 'that sweet Scamander boy, what ever happened to him' until he was dead and gone. 

“Hmm. That looks like it’s, er. Starting to work?”

There was a single benefit to be had: laudanum didn’t slur words one didn’t speak. The slight nod he gave made sickly tracks of false light sketch across the inside of his eyelids, and he was just starting to get the feverish feeling it always produced, but the _ache_ under the throbbing awareness of his leg was starting to ease back down and away. Not gone, just less important as his head went fuzzy--a hateful distinction, but there was little choice but to accept it for now.

He signaled for a pen, mostly into the Niffler’s warm fur, and cracked an eye open so that the ‘please’ sign didn’t hit anyone in the face.

“Left hand, dear,” he heard Eily murmur, and Newt’s knowing hum of agreement and then Newt was releasing him with a reassuring little squeeze to place a pen in his fingers, a scrap of paper laid over what must be a little field journal of Newt’s to protect the upholstery slipped under the pen tip. His hand shook--he’d have sent a report back for handwriting so sloppy.

“Teacups,” Eily read, leaning closer to get a look. “What’s this, then?”

“Er--there’s. A case requires a, er. Hmm. A rather higher quality of china for a transfiguration than the department mugs can provide.”

“And you’re saying a pawn shop just wouldn’t do, eh?” He didn’t need to look to know she’d put her fists to her hips again, sternly, or that her eyes would be twinkling.

 _Aunt Idina left enough china to serve half the city,_ he scratched out in fits and starts, and couldn’t stifle the twitch of his lips when it surprised a chortle out of Newt.

“You'll be taking the green, then--worth a fortune, it was, and it's ugly as sin. You'll not have the pink, Percy-- it was your mother's favorite."

 _Also ugly as sin_ , he noted as he was able through the bright twisty warmth of the cotton around his head and the soft growing heaviness of his eyes, _but the green was my intention_. He was reasonably certain he’d misspelled something, squinted suspiciously at the letters until even that was too much.

“Well, that’s alright then. I’ll fetch it down tonight, so it will be ready for you in the morning.”

He managed an ‘E’ before she saw and shushed him with a fond pat at his good knee.

“No need to press that knee harder when it’s got this bad already. And I’m sure your Mr. Scamander won’t mind helping you up the stairs, hmm?”

“I--of course I wouldn’t mind,” Newt murmured, and there was something guilty in the movement of his shoulders that made Percival hum an inquiry. “It’s--well. My wards certainly haven’t helped any.”

He hummed again, since the pen was rapidly becoming untrustworthy in his hand--the tickle of the noise only summoned a little hiccup of a cough, mostly smothered under the pain-killer.

His leg still ached like fire.

“The--the resonance we discussed, and how it produces either anxiety or, er. Euphoria. I--it likely masked some of the pain. So when we came out— well.”

“S’alright,” he murmured; he blinked as the pen fell to the ground with a thud, and blinked again as he realized the hand it had fallen from was free to take Newt’s once more.

Or at least, Newt’s hand was sliding back in his; he couldn’t recall moving.

But he was pleased it was there, and gave a little squeeze that was much nicer than the ones earlier, not so tight. “Mm— ‘s pretty.” The glory of the case, or its owner...well. Let Newt pick which he meant. Either would work. Both--both was good, also.

“Merlin, that hits him hard,” Newt murmured, his eyes seeming very green in the gentle light--and smiled. That made them look bluer again, but it didn’t touch the furrow between his coppery brows. Eily gave a chuckle, the huffing sort that meant he was worrying her more than she liked to admit, and patted his hand where it had stilled over the dozing Niffler. “Time to retire upstairs, hmm?”

There would be plenty of time to be mortified for the fuss tomorrow, he decided, and nodded.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always, thank you very much for reading, and I hope you've enjoyed!


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I owe folks at home an enormous apology for disappearing for more than a month; life attacked in the form of a thesis and a semester that is going to positively kick my ass, in addition to the frustration of actually writing. (Must a fanfiction be written? Is it not enough to fling plot points together in a glorious disjointed mash of pain and romance? Apparently not, so.) I am sorry about the delay, and the meagerness of this chapter. I can make no promise that it will not happen again; it will, in fact, likely be the new normal updating schedule for a little while. In light of that, the subscribe button might be pertinent; and of course you are always welcome to find me on tumblr. Fear not, though -- this story will continue, albeit quite slowly. We're roughly? half-way? Perhaps not quite half-way. We'll see.
> 
> I also want to thank the folks who have paused and left a comment. Every comment is incredibly uplifting, inspiring, and appreciated. Please consider yourselves, o commentators, the reason that this fic has swelled to being something with an actual plot; in it's initial incarnation, it was about two chapters long and stringy with it.
> 
> As always, acab, terfs fuck off, etc.

For a man who ordinarily moved like a marionette grown resentful of its strings, Newt Scamander was a remarkably graceful duelist. He was fast, surefooted; his wand strokes weren't military crisp--something about how he moved told Percival he had never once been military crisp--but they were clean and fluid, transitions sliding smoothly enough that his tells were quite minor. 

And, Percvial thought, flicking an extra cushioning spell after a Junior who hadn't minded her flank properly and was learning to fly as a consequence, he was just the right side of fucking _mean_. No Magician of Queensbury rules here, all sparks and conjuration and not much substance: he fought like he'd learned in the nastier back alleys of London, not Hogwarts' hallowed halls.

“Can we keep him, boss?” Delgato muttered from his place at Percival’s elbow. “Pretty please?”

 _Go spell Watts before he falls over_ , he wrote in shadows, in lieu of answering.

“Oh, come on--He's fantastic. You can’t tell me you’ve never wanted a feral scientist for the department, Boss—I _know_ you have—” Delgato sing-songed, and let the wandless shove of Percival’s hand-waved bombarda push him into the dueling circle with a manic grin growing on his face and his signature shit-talking flying fast. Percival watched Newt’s gaze flick over to size up a new opponent quickly, before he disappeared in another string of lightning-quick apparations. 

If he stayed true to form, Scamander would do his damnedest to knock Delgato off balance and tie him up in a mess of sticky spellwork, all while dancing around avoiding the spells of the other two, using each as a shield for the others until he could disarm them. He hadn't been particularly shy with his fists and elbows, either— two Juniors had been disarmed earlier by sheer dint of having taken a solid jab to the ribs and Scamander had plucked their wands from their fingers like a gentleman thief, and tossed them out of the big training circle before the Juniors had even stopped wincing.

Watts was fading fast and his partner not far behind; they were the last of the second round in the three-on-one, five-on-one, two-on-one sequence, and had finally gone back-to-back when the magizoologist had nearly managed Watt’s wand a moment ago. 

In fairness, it was rather impressive that they had both kept their wands this long; a duel stretching past ten minutes wasn't something often seen on the streets of New York, not like this, and these Juniors were entirely too young to know firsthand the stop-and-start hell of warfare, or to have fully worked out that adrenaline was as much the enemy as the magic drain in a long fight. The stamina for that sort of thing was hard-won and honed; it was one of the reasons for the growing number of very thoughtful looks on his Senior aurors’ faces, studying Scamander. 

Graves had a decision to make; traditionally, he was the second in the last match, and he set the final trial, after. 

The third trial wasn’t always a duel, but dictated by what he needed to see from the candidate, and what he thought they needed to see from him. The baby aurors fresh out of basic training and the transfers from far-distant departments always seemed braced for it, some 'fight of their lives', as if all he'd ever need from them was dueling prowess, but — well, the hotheads often needed a swift lesson in mutual respect, the by-the-bookers needed either validation or to be challenged, and the worried wanted a confidence boost. Dueling wasn’t often the tool he reached for, for those field tests.

But Field Testing served a number of purposes: the pressure-testing the new-coming aurors, the process of advancing, from trainee to Junior, Junior to Senior, Senior to specializations and special assignments, and the trialing field-readiness for those with injuries--and ensuring that consultants wouldn’t get themselves or anyone else killed. 

All told, it was one of his earliest, and proudest, implementations, that he'd been able to sort through and _make something_ of the mess that the training and ranking system had been: a hodge-podge of wand-waving hazing rituals and vying for attention and madcap stunts for status that had gone into his own training. 

And as casualties and instances of excessive violence dwindled lower every year, even as the no-maj side of the city got rougher and angrier, despite a Dark-fucking-lord goes half-mad on ideas about revolution— and even then, even with a civilian casualty so brutally senseless it left him speechless and aching with fury months (and several _dozen_ reports about the nasty little hexes and curses Grindlewald had left strung through his Department and draping off his people in tatters like fairy lights) later, even all that had been a remarkably controlled failure-- even with all those critical points of failure: an Obscurus had been loose in his city and only a handful of people had died. That was practically a miracle--he should have woken to a death toll in the hundreds, to mass exposure, and more damage than anyone could have covered over. 

He couldn't, and certainly wouldn't, claim that it was down to his training techniques--but they hadn't hurt. In that, he hadn't failed them.

Plenty of Testing _was_ concerned with physical fitness, and plenty more of it still _was_ dueling prowess, since those were some of the fastest ways to die in the field. But problem-solving was the thread that tied it all up: being too slow with a shield charm might kill you one day, but no auror was an auror long in _his_ department if they needed combat-ready wandwork for every case or used more force than they needed on the regular. If they couldn't talk their way out, _think_ their way out, of most situations, then he'd failed them and they had failed the Wizarding world.

He’d sewed it into the early morning training sessions, into the calisthenics, into patrols— into anything he had control over in those earliest days of his Directorship, because bored aurors were trouble-makers. And then he’d married problem-solving to ethics, because trouble-makers with power had better damn well be working for the people.

He could have cheerfully murdered Grindelwald for the breakdown of that discipline alone--it stirred a terrible dark anger whenever some new scrap of evidence of tampering rose to the surface: he was still deeply peeved that Goldstein had been transferred from a training suspension to a Permits position and then been reinstalled as a Junior by the President herself while he was still blind and bed bound, was still _furious_ that he'd lost four excellent aurors to the insult of unexplained transfers to backwater forces, and nearly six months later he was still working through the backlog of reports that had to be combed for sabotage or harm done--but that was a gaping black hole of ill will he had no interest in climbing down deeper into today. There were many things he'd have cheerfully murdered Gellert Grindelwald for.

The final part of the testing process was set up to be as much a test of the Director as it was of the new-comer — had to prove he could read them well enough to lead them, to teach them something. That made it his job to choose a trial that would show the candidate’s strengths to their peers, depending on if he intended them to have a success or a nominal failure, if he wanted them, or wanted them gone, and it all needed to be carefully done. 

There were a number of ways it could go, with Newt. A year ago, he would have pushed harder, put those apparations and that patience to the test and given him a proper dance. He might still — they hadn’t yet seen the ragged edges of Newt’s skills, and already he was earning thrilled whoops for holding so well against Delgato, especially as three-on-one became two-on-one and then devolved into just the pair of them playing apparation chicken with each other. After three days of friendly-but-shy and retiring, and months of Goldstein’s well-meaning descriptions as a good-intentioned chaos-riddled maniac with a case full of exotic creatures, there was value in showing the calculated intention and self-mastery of battle.

 _Giving_ the sort of show Newt was proving worthy of …

Well.

Blinking awake into the predawn dark of his bedroom that morning hadn’t hurt, but that was notable in being about the only thing that hadn’t, thus far. There were many reasons to passionately disdain the pain potion, and one of the more lingering was the root of today’s suffering: he slept deeply and entirely motionless under its influences, not even freed enough to twitch out of his nightmares, and he inevitably rose feeling like he’d been crushed, stiff and aching enough that even the act of breathing would tug well into the afternoon. The leg got the complete stillness it needed to ease--and the rest of him hurt so badly with the stiffness that he didn’t dare try anything strenuous for days. A flawed system, to be sure.

Today had been no different -- he hadn't even managed to stand at first, had sunk back down to rucked up sheets when even moving gingerly wasn't quite careful enough, strangling on a sound that died inhuman in his throat as his back had locked up like a vault.

It had taken most of an hour to achieve his simple fifteen minute morning routine and haul himself downstairs, pain sweat prickling at his hairline— and another hour to make it from the kitchen table, with its first, gentlest cup of coffee like a benediction, to his desk and a chipped mug that contained the liquid essence of assault-and-battery against his stomach lining.

The point was, _he_ wasn’t going to be doing any dancing today. And he had the benefit of having watched Newt fight for the better part of the morning, without returning the favor. Even without those advantages, Scamander wouldn’t win a back-alley duel between them--he put entirely too much of his own magic into the wards on his case, and it didn’t leave him enough magic to be a powerful duelist as well as a skilled one. And Newt certainly didn’t deserve the sort of rough-and-tumble treatment that was all Percival really had in him today, not in a brightly lit gymnasium in front of colleagues.

Besides. The fascinating sharp-eyed dragon rider wasn't the man Newt Scamander chose to be, for the everyday. He _chose_ soft stumbling explanations and the exquisite beauty of a world wrapped up in a traveling case fed on magic refracted through wards like prisms. There was value in that choice, and perhaps more value in Graves’ aurors learning to recognize the value of it. Newt was…

They had seen his skills for defending his traveling case realm, unexpectedly and delightfully martial. That was a simultaneously easy and difficult respect to give, for Percival’s aurors—they were a hard crowd to impress, but it was an easy respect once it was earned. And they'd heard, caught glimpses of his skill at wrangling his beasts. That was a stranger kind of respect; magical animals were a contentious sort of topic, more danger than delight, and the people who moved them illicitly were so often the worst sort of scum, who made them more dangerous still, or dead and pitiable. The fact that Goldstein--both Goldsteins, even--vouched for his gentleness, that O’Sullivan and Weiss could confirm genuine skill, was in some ways more valuable even than the favor Percival had shown. So they could respect the skill because they could understand and respect the intent.

Percival had seen a bit more, just enough to guess at the work that went into skill, had seen Newt work: watched him watching, for those flickering body-speak hints, and weighing possibilities against experience, and swaying through his body-speak replies. Doing it double-time, even, watching and working out what Percival was saying, when words wouldn't slide out past his teeth.

He was writing a book, Percival recalled; remembered Goldstein reporting a promised gift of a copy once it was published, in answering whether Scamander was likely to ever return. Documenting his fantastical creatures. Telling the world about them, why they should be cherished as he cherished them. He wondered if Newt could describe what he himself did, to be able to earn trust from those incredible animals, if a book could teach the skill of open-minded communication or the cleverness of matching needs to actions enough to understand it as language, in the moment, with only seconds to spare. 

Watching him dance with Delgato, Graves wondered why the Ministry let him go. Imagine, having a man who could--had, did, was _desperately_ willing to — speak with non-humans, wanted learn to understand them and communicate their needs and cultures. Imagine having that, and choosing to throw him out into the cold instead of utilizing him at every possible turn. Imagine doing it, with forests full of centaurs and lakes full of merpeople and a list of creatures who straddled the beings and beasts designations that numbered in the low hundreds. Imagine honorably discharging one of the only truly successful dragon-riders since the times of Merlin and deciding to kick him to the curb. 

The British Ministry was full of fools and war-mongers, Percival reminded himself, as he decided--and stepped forward into the circle, raised a hand to catch two wands, flicked his wand to drop the wards that kept wild-flung spells from taking out bystanders. Let the Ministry forever be a lesson in what _not_ to do.

Delgato grinned and bounced on his toes a bit when Percival tossed him his wand back. Boundless curiosity and unholy glee over the details was the simultaneous gift and curse of the man: keeping that enormous appetite for information, for constructive action, properly sated felt like it would half-beggar him some days--Delgato was half the reason for Field Testing by himself. But damned if he wasn’t one of Graves’ best.

It made him perfect to test this on.

Graves handed Newt his wand back, and tapped a fingertip to the back of his hand to draw his attention up from the side. Newt might be able to observe from the corner of his eye, and certainly he pretended not to see anything quite well, but Percival needed the show of his attention as well as the attention itself.

 _Thank you_ , he signed preemptively, and then, slowly: _please. Report, look-listen_ , and he gestured between them, and then pointedly to Delgato. And softened it with a signal he’d used a few times to ask questions, tilting his head as well to strengthen the question. Will you tell him, he thought, and contemplated what a hand signal for teach might look like.

He could see the narrow-eyed understanding in Newt’s face--what he’d signaled and perhaps the nature of this test--and avid interest in Delgato’s, still bouncing in his wingtips like a boy. Percival smiled.

“He's asked me to translate, or explain," Newt said. 

_First, please,_ he signaled. _The second in a bit, after. Thanks_ , he motioned, the shallower version of that deep grateful bow _. At your mark._

Newt repeated him--there was something very strange about being translated for, out loud, something even stranger about a posh English accent wrapping itself around his words, like and not at all like the half-mauled lilt that had clung to his mum’s, and subjected her to all the sneers and jeers of Hogwarts, and nothing at all like O’Sullivan’s. 

Percival had the satisfaction of watching Delgato's face go slack and then light up as he realized, like Christmas come early. A gift all its own, really — Delgato would learn the signs quickly, spread them through the other aurors like wildfire, and add or earn another hundred in less than a month. 

Only about half of them would be filthy swearwords.

“Show me again,” said Delgato, heels flat on the ground for the first time in an hour. “Hang on, that’s for--again.”

  
  
  


It took two tries for Aunt Idina’s hideous green tea service to shift easily into that king’s ransom of a herd Newt had stashed in his case; Weiss had popped in with reports and stayed to perfect the illusions, finely wrought ears a-flicking, feathers rustling, and noses soft as baby’s breath beneath stroking fingers. That task done, they’d moved on to dividing the magical load of the transfigurations among the aurors who would be accompanying Weiss and Newt, and the problem of how to recreate Scamander’s iconic case with something that could safely be stolen, without endangering any living animals or the citizens of Philadelphia.

Or so he assumed; the Director's afternoon was meetings stacked on correspondence piled over reviewing the budget for the third quarter; once the tea set had proved to work and Weiss’s summation of the Philadelphia situation had wrapped up, his ten o’clock took precedence.

The next six hours were given over to several dozen tasks, and he didn’t look up at the tap on his door, just waved for it to open. He also didn’t notice that the pausing gesture he gave paired itself with words, ‘just a moment,’ too instinctive to trip over.

It was more of a surprise that he was, in fact, given a moment — eyes zipping over the last few sentences, mind busily weighing function against proposed form and cost and picking apart the balancing of power. He’d have to mull it over further before he responded, but he dated and initialed the ‘received’ stamp knowing that somewhere in the bowels of the buildings, a charmed typewriter was spitting out a memo— and stuffed the sheaf of pages under the scowling gargoyle paperweight that held his current affairs before he looked up.

To find Newt, case in hand and coat over his arm, frowning contemplatively at the contents of one of the cabinets.

 _You’re off to Philadelphia_ , he wrote in the air, and winced, shook out fingers that were protesting several hours too many clenched around a pen. 

Newt looked up without startling, and Percival thought again, of all the skills he wanted this man teaching his people.

“Yes, everything’s, um, set to satisfaction, so, er,” he gave a whole-body shuffle of a shrug, “I was hoping you’d, er. Perhaps be willing to keep this safe," he said, and Percival didn't understand him for a moment, took entirely too long to discern that he meant the _case_ , the genuine one— enough for something like panic to crease Scamander’s face.

"I--mean, I understand entirely, of course. If you'd prefer not—I, I can, perhaps, er, by Tina's desk--"

Percival nodded sharply, scrawled, _yes, of course_.

“I--I’ll just, I’ll do that, then.”

He blinked, and lurched a little bit in his chair, not quite enough to scramble up. He tried to say: Newt, tried to say: wait. Managed neither, and rapped a knuckle harshly on the desk to catch Newt’s attention before he could disappear out the door— his leg was in no shape to be chasing down lanky magizoologists. 

_Of course I’ll keep it safe_ , he wrote. _Here, or at the house, whichever is more comfortable. For you,_ he emphasized, when Newt's face took on that abashed, accommodating expression, half-averted but glancing to catch his words. _Whichever would make_ _you_ _more comfortable._

"I--do you mind? I. I just; I don't mean to be a bother. I don't typically let it out of my sight in cities, and— well, I'm sure you don't, er, need me to tell you New York is no safe place for my creatures."

No, he acknowledged with a brief shake of his head, and lifted his wand again: _I do need a list of anything that needs to be done to keep things well in the case, before you go. And I'd like to know who threatened them last time you were here._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for reading. I hope you've enjoyed it.


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Have, uh... 1700 words of conversation? The rest of this chapter is fighting me, and I'm sick of staring at the working part of it while I try to work out the not working part of it.

"Well, well, well. If it isn't Mr. Graves himself. If it is indeed Mr. Graves."

The Blind Pig wasn't really the sort of place to get loud until well after dark, when shadows hid the cracks and the lights smeared a bit of glitter around — in the sunlight hours just after quitting time, it's gloom was dingier still, greasy sunlight skulking in through the airborne dust. The only regular was perched on a stool, weeping softly into giggle water, with his hat still on and his jacket a crumple on the floor, stained a corrosive-looking orange. There'd be at least one deal being cooked in the backroom, maybe the dregs of a high-stakes game, but by and large, if Gnarlack was cleaning glasses behind the bar at five-thirty-two in the afternoon, all was quiet.

"Gnarlack. You're looking well. Bit of fresh paint, I see." He made quite the show of looking around, nodding like he gave a damn about what color of grey went on the walls. The floor was as sticky as it had always been — Percival couldn’t remember a time in the years of Gnarlack owning it where the floor hadn’t had enough of a patina of grime that even fine, slick-soled shoes had plenty to grip. 

Not without reservations, mostly for the sake of his clothes, he eased into a chair. One that gave him a square view of the back and peripherals on the front door, naturally. Gnarlack sneered, took down a bottle before rounding the bar.

"Phaah, your aurors busted up my place chasing a mook. Took months to fix up again. Heard they busted you up, too." A glass appeared at his elbow; Ogden's, neat.

He raised an eyebrow over it; the liquid gleam deepened to Blishen's signature burnished color. 

"You bear up well under the adversity; it must be difficult to have such profound hearing loss at such an early age. I'll be sure to speak slowly."

"Ooh, now there's no call to get all nasty, Director, s'just what they're saying." He slid into his own seat, a snarly sort of say-nothing grin painted in place.

"Is it? Funny, I've heard a different tune. Say, how’s the conversion from the hexengeld to dragots? I wouldn’t have thought it’s doing too well these days.”

“Now, I dunno what you mean by _that_ —”

“In smaller words, then,” Percival said, and didn’t need to lean forward or shift at all to change his demeanor from faux-friendly to not-so-nice. “We've known each other a long time, Gnarlack. Long enough for you to know that I hold my wand in my right hand and write with my left. Long enough to know my signature as well as I do. Plenty long enough to know that I don't raid speakeasies, and I don't send Juniors to do it. And I certainly don’t send Juniors after other Juniors."

"And what of it, Mr. Graves— surely you aren't suggesting you hold little old me to a higher standard than your own minions?" There was a proper flicker of nerves behind Gnarlack's smile now, and for good reason: his business model depended just a little too much on moving information in two directions. Most of the time, that suited Graves just fine— the sort of trouble Gnarlack's bully boys got into was easier countered in other ways, and the non-wizarding magic folk didn't trust aurors, but they'd trust a goblin-run black market.

"Just cleaning up, Gnarlack— no sense in tossing good money after shit. Especially not if your ears are going."

"I— now, Graves, that's damn hasty. Like you said, we've known each other a long time; you're not a hasty man—"

"Playing both sides damn near got my aurors killed, and I’m not exactly carrying this stick for the fun of it."

"I remember the rules," Gnarlack grumped, scowling again but more at ease to be getting off with a scolding. "Ain't like any of yours died _here_ , an' it weren't _my_ fault some Dark beast fucked up Lower Manhattan. How was I supposed to know you weren't just taking a vacation and that weren't, wassit— Weiss, in a glamor?"

"When have you ever known me to take a vacation, Gnarlack?"

"Sorta makes my point, don't it? Now I ask you, what sorta man doesn't make some time for himself, Graves?"

"Gnarlack."

"All's I'm saying, Graves, is you coppers still don't get paid enough, 'cause they want your whole damn soul in return for making trouble with us little people."

"You have your work, and I've got mine," Percival replied, and picked up his firewhiskey to wash away the glass that wanted to grow in his throat, irritated by so many words. Let Gnarlack see it as a tiny admission of shattered nerves and think he knew Percival's feelings on the matter; even better if the goblin thought he was muscling through some terrible angst about the hustle of his work week and the weight of his civic sins— it kept his nose out of the more intimate details of Percival's life. "No more playing to the tune of Dark Wizards, hmm? Even if they offer you money."

"Phah, don't like your lot enough to deal with more of you than I gotta. Damn Aurors are too much fucking work and you're fuckin' cheap, I tell you, even the fake ones. Your lot tips like shit--my girls always complain, youse never leave anything on the table."

"Keep it that way," he said of the first, and drank again, tapping the glass down. "One more thing."

Gnarlack's eyes narrowed over the rim of his glass. The scolding had been mostly a formality, though Percival was pleased to see it was one that had worried him enough that he hadn’t suspected another angle—good. When the glass settled on the table, Percival waved to refill them both, Blishen's again, even though it made Gnarlack's eyes narrow even more and flick over to measure the liquid in the bottle. He'd be checking the bottles in the back as well when Percival left, to satisfy himself with it having come from the Graves' celler; as if Percival wasn't perfectly capable of replacing Blishen's with Ogden's and Ogden's with the the place next door's bathtub hooch. 

That, he didn't bother to replace with water — the no-maj proprietor owned the no-maj side of the block and certainly wouldn't suffer for it. The employee who'd get the boot for the theft would avoid the inevitable raid by the no-maj police. Perhaps it would even spare a few of the customers some of the ill-effects of methanol poisoning, but perhaps not. Wizards and the various other folks and beings would just enjoy the kick, smack their lips and say it was a good year for Ogden's. Gnarlack would up his prices, and his waitresses would continue to complain.

"What can I do for you, Director."

"There was a man who came to see you last December; you put up a poster for him and one of my Juniors."

"The swell in the billboard coat running around with the Goldstein girls? What about him?”

“I want what you know about him, for the usual.” The usual was two crates of milder magical contraband, usually medical potions and charmed muggle nonsense that he permitted to enter the city, and the continued ability to run a business--the legitimate one, such as it was--without excessive harassment. Given Graves’ predecessor’s legendary dislike of goblins, it was no poor deal to have arrived at, in a short decade’s time with Graves’ as Director. Gnarlack was the first goblin proprietor of alcohol in New York for more than fifty years. 

Times used to be, back when they were both younger and each doing a great deal more running, ‘the usual’ was just a bottle of what sat on the table, all either of them could comfortably spare or expect.

Gnarlack grinned, real this time, and just as not-so-nice as Percival's tone had gotten. “Got a cute little lockpick he keeps on show and a ugly little case that’s rumored to be chock-full of all sorts of things that would make an alchemist wet his boxers. Maybe still on the hoof, eh? Your, er, stand-in, he wanted that case real bad. Could get a pretty bit of ritz myself with what it’d bring, and more if I limped it out. I’d not say no to calling dibs, no sir. The sap was--eh, bit of a daisy, maybe, definitely a limey, smelled like Hogwarts still, tho’ he had to be a decade out, at least. Busted wand, fixed up with something--not sure what. Name was something like Salamander.”

“Scamander, actually.”

“Hey, like that, wassit—the Ministry heavy, after the dust-up abroad. That’s him?”

“A brother,” Percival allowed. "This one's ex-Ministry.” That was enough information to let Gnarlack do his own digging — he’d find plenty to figure out on his own why he ought to keep sticky fingers away from that case.

“What do you want with an _ex-_ Ministry mook anyway?”

“I want it very clear that whoever tries to bother him, or his creatures, while he’s a MACUSA consultant, will answer directly to me. I trust you’re up to the task.” He didn’t smile, to watch Gnarlack’s face fall, cheerful avarice to sulky disappointment. He didn't raise an eyebrow, either, when Gnarlack's expression shifted again, to something canny and darting.

“Hey, now--dunno if I’m good for all that, Graves--he wasn’t exactly, er. _Circumspect_ , last time. ‘S a big ask, is all’s I’m saying--bound t'be expensive.”

“Best figure it out, Gnarlack, or you’d better have a very good reason why I oughtn’t let him feed you and your boys to a Nundu.”

“Hey, _hey_ —that ain’t fair, Graves, I ain’t got nothing to do with it.” Probably not--or not yet, but he knew about it, whatever it might be.

“I expect you’ll rise to the occasion, hmm? No conversion rates, after all,” he hummed, finishing his drink and tapping down the glass, and a fresh-minted MACUSA ten-dragot alongside it. “For the girls, to cover their tips.” 

“ _You_ —you know, your ma was a lady, Graves, but you’re a real fuckin’ sonofa—”

“Keep your people out of trouble, Gnarlack,” he called out, half-way to the door. "No wooden nickels.”

“Fuckin’ _short-change artist_ ,” he heard, not nearly an undertone, and smiled, pulling the door closed behind him. He didn't bother to climb the stairs before whirling away; conversations were exhausting enough these days without making his knee _more_ furious.


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You deserve better, or at least more, than this, but this is what I have and it isn't going to get better to fussing with it.  
> I will absolutely be disappearing for the next fifteen-to-twenty days to wrap up the semester. Hopefully, I'll have the next out within a week or two after that, but I can make no promises as to update schedule; I will undoubtedly be shattered by the end of finals.
> 
> We're reintroducing plot, and fair warning, this is a cliff-hanger. I'll understand if folks would rather wait to read it; that said, I can renew my promise that this all ends reasonably happily.
> 
> Kudos are extremely appreciated, and comments are the fuel that keep the fires burning. I thank wholeheartedly the folks that take the time to let me know what they liked. Y'all are the real MVPs, here, and you should feel good about yourselves.

As a rule, Percival did not nap often; it played merry hell with any sort of sleep schedule he might attempt to instate for days, and sharpened a normally steady-held temper to a fine sharp edge that he didn’t like and didn’t like to inflict on his housemates or his employees or himself.

These days, a nap meant he hurt _terribly_ , or he hadn’t slept in so long that his eyes wouldn’t stop blurring and he couldn’t make it to a respectable ten o’clock before retreating to bed. 

But naps had once meant night-time operations, where that edge of temper was lined with adrenaline he needed to control carefully and channel into extracting hostages or diffusing magical explosions or capturing the sort of wizards who thought nothing of spilling blood for power, the more innocent the better. And before that— well, an auror-turned-soldier slept where and when and however they could and good temper had little enough to do with it, when one came awake already three spells deep in a firefight. 

He’d never quite shaken that habit, waking from a nap with a spell practically half out of his mouth. In fairness, it was usually a shield spell, and he hadn’t actually woken mid-cast for nearly a decade, not even in the hospital. But he also no longer lived alone, and sleep was fraught enough, after Grindelwald and all his associated unpleasantness, without adding the stress of trying to sleep while the other members of the household were awake. 

All in all, he didn’t take terribly many naps.

The knee was demanding it though— even just an hour, of stillness and released muscle tension and the blissful numbing of unconsciousness. By the time he’d gotten back from the Blind Pig it had been screaming at him, nearly as badly as yesterday, _for_ yesterday and for behaving today as though yesterday hadn’t been awful. 

A nap, as grumpy as it made him even in concept, and as badly as lying down at quarter-past five in the afternoon would throw off his sleep, was still better than resorting to the pain potion again. Two days in a row would leave him practically useless until half-way through the weekend, and furious with himself for it.

Not that being furious with himself was precisely an unfamiliar sensation, either, but it just made everything else harder.

First things first, however — he’d never manage to sleep, not with the creeping anxiety that he might _over_ sleep, might be late or unprepared for a check-in with his people, out in the field. Support tasks, even those that were just a half-step above mere formalities, came first.

And that meant the case, and it’s denizens.

The case would mostly take care of itself. Newt had tripped over promising it wouldn't be any trouble at least half a dozen times before Weiss had arrived to hustle him away, but there were just a few things— 

So Percival eased himself down the narrow stairs, with a list in Newt's careful-est scrawl tucked into his pocket, to check the Erumpent's water and give the lambent-eyed mooncalves a loving skritch behind the ears from the safety of the fence before he gave them their pellets. Apparently, mooncalves reverted to feral, human-wary behavior incredibly easily without regular contact, and these, rescued from neglect and abandonment, were more prone than most; so Newt had them on a regime of small regular meals and routine attention. 

There were a few other creatures that needed that sort of specific care as well: the bowtruckles got extra woodlice, since they were recovering still from a nasty incident with some no-maj loggers that had taken their host trees and nearly doomed the lot of them to a slow death. And the real flying horses should be checked in on, since their enclosure had been tossed together so quickly and their caloric needs were somewhat complex, being the racing sort, but also out of work--if Percival saw ribs from any sort of distance, he was to correct the feedlist in the workshop, increase the grain allotment up by half a cup and the hay ration by five pounds; the charms would manage from there. Apparently, if he only felt them, under the shift of muscle, that was perfectly alright and to be expected of horses so exquisitely fit. 

The Niffler, of course, would come searching for her own entertainment, and the demiguise would as well, but the doxies and the diricawl mother preferred live prey, or at least the illusion of it, if— if he would be so kind?

 _Yes, Newt_ , he’d nodded, and written: _Show me how you do it, please_.

Very little else was actually tame enough or least approximately harmless enough for him to have anything to do with; the wards and embedded magicks would manage. Heroics, Newt had recited in the odd little sing-song of an oft-heard scolding, were for those with the proper training.

Which seemed to encompass Newt, and perhaps only Newt, as far as Percival could tell. 

The baby-proofing, as Newt had put it, with a soft self-deprecating chuckle and only a few extra scattered apologies, was something Percival could thank Theseus Scamander for— one close call with a Nundu had seemed plenty to Newt, or at least it had after a full hour of shouting. And Percival had to admit, nearly becoming a Nundu's lunch didn't seem as appealing as casting a few aguamenti or parceling out some dried woodlice.

There was some manner of alarm ward that would tell him, in any case, if any of those creatures' water sources failed, or if a ward failed, or if they injured themselves grievously. 

His involvement was _mostly_ a formality--Newt had hastened to assure him, if he— or, or whoever he gave the task to— if they were too busy, the case would manage. But he’d looked so _pleased_ , when Percival had repeated the assurance, that it would be done, and he’d be the one to do it. 

So all this was mostly so that when Newt fire-called, later in the evening, just before Weiss and O’Sullivan whisked him off for a stake-out dinner to watch the faux case get stolen by their perpetrators, Percival had good things to report, to ease his mind. 

(It was a formality he was still a little surprised to have been offered, considering his position, and Newt’s, considering Newt's skittishness with the other aurors, even Tina Goldstein, considering it has been _four days_. 

An eventful four days, certainly, but only four.

He had been tamping down the startled bright-warm feeling that trust had lit in his chest for hours, calling himself every kind of fool, repeated a dozen times to himself that it was _practical_ for the work he'd asked of Newt, to leave such a vulnerability safe, that it didn't mean anything other than Newt had a deep well of pragmatism under that romantic's veneer.

He called himself a fool again, and made another thawed dead mouse appear to skitter away from the diricawl chicks and their sharp-eyed mother.)

The walk back was as deeply beautiful as it had been yesterday, if a little less over-bright from the endorphins and the ward-euphoria. Even sober and hurting, the sky was still watercolor-soft and the wind smelled of grass and pines, tasted of magic. 

He'd ask, when Newt got back, how he managed to make painted drop cloths take on a seamless, flowing aspect, like a breathing copy of one of the River School landscapes his father had loved —the ones Father had practically wall-papered with, up in the library, that had drawn inspiration from the land that stretched out wild for miles around the house under the Graves family wards.

The workshop was its own wonder, he realized— he'd had to sit, before trying the stairs, and had in fact sat down harder than he'd planned, needed to stretch the leg out to soften the angry jolts of pain. He’d even managed to do so without letting the whimper out from behind his teeth, gritted out the spell Newt had shown him, to make his handkerchief go cold as ice instead. And had breathed out slowly, forcing himself to master the rate his breathing down from a hitching portent of panic before he opened his eyes.

Breathing through the ache, he’d found a wealth of fascinating things to draw his attention: a wall full of curiosities far more interesting than the cabinets in his office.

It was a good distraction from the soft-worn feel of the quilted duvet beneath him, as well; the lurking knowledge that he had helped himself to Newt's de facto camp bed, for want of anywhere else to sit. Without so much as a by-your-leave, though he couldn’t imagine Newt resenting the presumption--it was still a prickling feeling, a charged awareness of the breach of manners, the intimacy presumed by— 

And he was _leaving it_ at that thought, he was. 

Consummate professionalism had never been a struggle before, and he wasn't going to allow it to be one now. He wasn't going to offer even a hint of further impropriety, not and risk Newt's discomfort.

 _Leave it be,_ he thought, and punctuated it: _maudlin old man_.

He left it.

When his eyes weren't blurry with panic or pain, the workshop was genteel chaos; a look into Newt's mind, he imagined. Scraps of paper and notebooks a terrific jumble that made his hand itch to straighten them. There were samples — a tuft of hair trapped neatly in a repurposed money clip, a number of very large, scrubbed-clean vertebrae that seemed to be acting as paperweights, a jar of not-quite compost sprouting quite a lot of seeds — layered into the jumble, like fossils in rock strata. There might be some of those buried in the jumble, as well. 

A map festooned in pins and other small sharp implements was tucked under the cabinets, across most of the wall, a few loops of embroidery floss arrowing from one pin to the next. Siberia buried itself in the trailing ends of ropes Newt had looped neatly and hung from hooks, but the rest was a blaze of color and scribbled notes, layered over in places by more scraps, and circled in red in others.

The apothecary Newt kept at the other end of the workbench was tidier— jars of ingredients neatly stowed in a rack, a massive chopping board, thankfully clean if stained a disconcerting purple, a small brewing cauldron, clean as well and tucked away within a much larger no-maj stock pot with scorch marks licking up its sides. The cabinets with foodstuffs and other bits and bobs were closed, and locked if his note was truthful, as was only sensible with a Niffler around, but the one with crockery and other unprecious things stood cracked, displaying how Newt had modified the space, with padded cubbies and little rests to keep things where he put them. It wasn't lovely, perhaps, but it was brilliant, a space of lost-and-found things that Newt had clearly worked over again and again until they did their jobs perfectly.

He dozed, waiting for his knee to ease its throbbing enough to stand again— must have dozed, because the last thing he remembered was squinting at the pattern of pins in the map on the wall trying to work out why they tickled something in the back of his brain, and then he blinked to find huge blue eyes far too close to his face, and the feel of the wall propping his shoulder.

"—Hello," he rasped, at a loss for how else to greet— well, this must be Dougal the demiguise, judging by the hair. Their pelts were so sought-after, he'd never seen one alive, not in all his years with the Aurors. The note Newt had left him about Dougal was— not exhaustive, really, but it made clear that Dougal was a bit of a special one even in this suitcase full of wonders. One that particularly liked digestive biscuits, should he need to be coaxed back into the case for any reason.

Dougal stared another minute, big golden eyes very solemn, and then faded from sight, invisibility seeming to trickle from the tips of his fur to the base. Percival watched him leave through the door; the creak of it opening and the soft thump of it closing again on a spring.

Even Newt's animals were polite in shooing him out. He should get up; climb the stairs, and then another two dozen, go lay in his own bed to let his leg stop screaming. He should, he thought again, squeezing his eyes closed at the coming effort of controlling himself, resenting for one wild moment the imposition of pain.

The sound of claws on fabric, and the shift of the quilt opened his eyes; up the Niffler came, and didn't pause at the plateau of the surface but scrambled right into his lap, already purring.

He let his head drop against the wall again, and skritched the content of his defeat into warm-soft fur.

The nap did him some good, emerging from the case an hour later with a gently snoring Niffler in his pocket, expanded to allow her the comfort she clearly expected. He didn't even scowl when Eily tugged him down to get a good look at his face and tuck back an escaping strand of hair, to nod decisively. 

"Better," she allowed, over a chorus of tiny giggles. "You’ll eat dinner, and have an early evening, hmm?”

There was no arguing with that tone — there hadn’t been when he was a seven-year-old chatterbox, and certainly not when he was nearly forty-seven, without the words to argue with. So he kissed her cheek and sketched a dutiful 'yes, ma'am' out of shadows, and scooped up Norah and Tomas to distract with fairy lights instead of getting underfoot in the kitchen.  
  


The seven o'clock hour came and went; given to the last burst of the little ones' play and then the clink and murmur of dinner.

Eight o'clock saw the children to bed, and the adults to the sitting room with their personal amusements, Kit’s crochet and Percival’s reports to be read and Eily’s muttering over the latest letter from her sister.

Quarter ‘til nine was the first pang of concern, his pen slowing to a stop on the page. The Niffler was still a warm weight at his side; she’d had quite the evening of darting between the children begging pets and allowing herself to be chased between the candlesticks and the gilt vases, and had retired back to her spot in his waistcoat pocket. 

_She_ didn’t seem especially perturbed by her keeper’s tardiness in checking in. And no one knew the stretch of delays like an auror. 

Nine proper earned the mantle clock a frown, and he stood to check the wards on the fire, to be sure that the Floo was open. It was, exactly as it had been yesterday, and the day before that; he settled back down, but while the reports sat ready in his lap, he watched the fire instead.

He was already on his feet when Dougal appeared in the doorway twenty minutes later, luminous eyes glowing blue and visibly distressed, his odd little face crumpled in fright and his long-fingered hands moving in familiar ways, an eerily human request to be held.

"Lad, what’s the matter?” Kit asked, hands gone still on his hook and yarn.

There wasn’t any answer to that, not yet; he shook his head again, crossed to Dougal to let the demiguise climb up to hide against his chest. Newt had jotted down a few notes about the creatures who might elect to roam, and Dougal seemed intent on displaying all of them, the situational precognition, the stuttering invisibility, the startling display of emotional sentience.

The floo flashed brilliant green a moment later, the mantel bell tolling 'urgent, emergency'. Dougal made an awful little noise into his collar and went invisible, just as solid but gone in a rippling shimmer of wild magic.

It could be nearly anything — 'urgent, emergency' was a floo call he got on a monthly basis, and half the time over something as simple as a signature on an obliviation report. It could be, he reminded himself. Just because there was a painfully rare magical creature moaning softly in his arms and a Niffler gone prey-animal still in his pocket didn't mean he'd gotten his extremely temporary, British-national, madcap consultant killed in a sting over some stolen flying horses. 

"Sir, it's Jeffries," he heard, and nodded, tweaking the wards to allow visuals. Jeffries was always good at keeping a straight face; there wasn't any hint to be gained from her expression, if he should prepare for the worst. "There's a development on the Philadelphia case; Senior Auror Weiss is waiting to report, said it's sensitive. Can you come?"

He nodded, held up a hand spread wide. Five minutes.

"Yes, sir; I'll let Auror Weiss know and keep the third fireplace clear for Floo."

The case was in his study; fewer precious things to break if Dougal or the Niffler decided to explore and fewer stairs to climb, and it was the second-most warded room in the house, equally as secure as his office at MACUSA, against everything three generations of Graves' could think of. Only the children's room was better guarded.

Percival barely felt the steepness of the case's stairs, adrenaline already starting to pump. He tucked Dougal up into his nest and delivered the Niffler into his reaching hands, to keep safe and contained while he went to sort out the wizard who had built them their home.

There were hundreds of things he could say, decades of practice soothing those left behind, and nothing that would help, even if he could spit out the words; he left them with a last ruffle of fingers over each head, and made sure the workshop door was closed firmly behind him.

Kit met him at the door with cufflinks, holster, and jacket. His coat, no doubt, was already draped over one of the wingback chairs of the sitting room; it was the first thing Kit ever put hands to when Percival was called out, and Percival always found the home-safe wards refreshed whenever Kit laid hands on it. “Eily’s gone for a thermos; says she’ll be damned if you ruin your stomach on Pepper-Up and coffee with nothing to put in it.”

“Kit,” he rasped in protest, “Hate to disturb your evening—” Refreshing wards was no small thing, not the way a house elf did them, and it was going to take a toll, days of stiff, aching joints that wouldn’t permit progress on his crochet or any of the hundred other small things that he derived daily pleasure from. Eily, too — she’d have layered enough magic into that thermos to keep whatever was in it hot until he remembered to drink it, and she’d feel the chill.

“I know I didn’t raise a fool, Percival Graves, so you’ll say thank you if you’ve nothing smarter to say.”

“Of course, _thank you_ ,” he grumbled, as if they hadn’t been exactly the words he’d been working up his throat, for Kit and for Eily as well, when she reappeared. 

"Be safe," she commanded, handing it over with a regal nod to accept his rusty-sounding thanks.

"Don't wait up, please," he asked. It was a bruise of a request that they all still flinched from a bit; not the deepest wound Grindelwald had carved, but an anxiety that lingered.

"If you'll not be home tomorrow, I'll expect a firecall," Eily said. "And you're to eat that soup before it goes cold."

The squeeze of too many things to say meant he’d get none of them; meant a crisp nod and the careful squeeze of the delicate hands in his, in silent promise. 

Then there was the rush and roar of the floo in his ears and he was stepping out into the bullpen in a frenzy.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you!


	13. Chapter 13

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh, dear people, you deserve better. But this is what I have for you in these troubled times, and here’s to hoping that the next part comes a little bit easier before school starts up again along with the 2020 hang-over and hair of the dog to come. Please be safe and well.
> 
> As for our gentlemen...well. When it rains, as they say. Please enjoy some actual plot. I promise the snuggles will come back some day, but it isn’t today.
> 
> Usual author disclaimer: this is a fantasy, playing with a handful of interesting narrative tropes. This isn’t how cops work, nor does it reflect of my views about the redemption of the police or police-work (there is none; the only good cop is a cop who’s stopped being a cop), or the redemption of the uber-rich (again, there is none, and the same applies).

He'd forgotten, for a moment, that it had been only hours and even Delgato didn’t move that quickly, when gesturing for a report left Weiss frowning quizzically at him, head tilted and eyes narrowed.

But there was one thing that all of his most-Senior Aurors had in common— and it was nearly the only thing they all had in common; they were every one of them lightning fast on the uptake. He barely had time to reach for his wand to write it out when Weiss nodded sharply in understanding.

 _Well, no—two things_ , he thought, as Weiss fell into step beside him, wafting dust and the ozone-scent of tracking spells, began to explain exactly how everything had gone to shit: no matter the crisis, his aurors kept their heads.

But gone to shit it certainly had. 

The case had been taken exactly as planned, forty minutes like clockwork after their departure from the hotel, following a few hours of being sufficiently visible at the Philadelphia station. They’d waited— long enough to finish a decent meal with half-a-dozen of the Philadelphia force, to be seen, case abandoned and its guardian at rest, and then gone back to the hotel to pick up the tracking spells and get to work. Taking care to look a little worse for the beer, and even more carefully shepherding Newt between them; better that Newt was as much a dark horse as possible, his stuttering and sideways glances exercised as social camouflage, everything about him working to suggest that the sharp competence a small few had seen was a fluke or an exaggeration--just as planned. 

They had wanted Scamander’s presence non-threatening and non-combative, as much as possible, and as far as either O'Sullivan or Weiss could tell, the Philly aurors had bought the act. There had been a few testing inquiries volleyed in Scamander's direction, but the auror Newt had bawled out— Butler, Torandrius Butler, a ten-year senior auror, with a double-fistful of civilian complaints and one warning on file— had been doing their work for them, bad-mouthing the magizoologist to anyone who would give him the time of day, and plenty would wouldn't, as well.

Not twenty minutes after getting back, Scamander had been taken as well. From the second room, no less, the one that the Philadelphia aurors weren't meant to know about, down the hall a little ways and rented under a false name by a long time informant of O’Sullivan’s. 

In the half-minute he’d been alone, gone to take off his coat and settle his valise, safely shrunken in his pocket — Newt’d had time to exclaim and little more; O’Sullivan had caught the barest glimpse before their consultant had been whirled away with three other figures. 

O’Sullivan and Weiss had tracked him three jumps down the line, and lost him again on a double-back. O’Sullivan was still in Philadelphia now, trying to revive the scent and putting the fear of the New York Branch in them.

 _The coat?_ Graves sketched in the air as they rounded the corner to the conference room, and answered his question before Weiss could: it was laid out like a shroud over the table, looking dull and entirely too small without the body it usually wrapped around, and lifeless, with no flash of mobile green.

 _The bowtruckle?_ Picket, Newt had called him last night, when he'd given Percival a very impressive sneer for how small and wooden his little face was, and blown a thimble-sized raspberry from the ascended safety of Newt's hair. He’d been extremely attached to Newt, not wanting to be parted from him for even a moment. 

"The— well, that's a useful creature to have along to a kidnapping. Haven't seen it all day, didn't realize Scamander had one with him. Hope he can keep it out of sight."

Percival nodded his agreement, still frowning at the coat. The acrid-yellow of the tracking spell signals hung like evil thunderheads eighteen inches above the teal wool, and a foe-glass was already whirling along beside it on the table. Until they spat something out or the recall charms activated to pull Scamander back to his case, assuming he still had access to his boots in two-days time, there was nothing the Percival could do with the coat that wasn’t already in motion.

_Someone had best get the Philly chief out of bed if he isn't already, and on the mirrors._

  
  


The first real break came at dawn: a note, probably brought by pigeon, that had reluctantly folded up into the form of a sewer rat in the Mail Room, slinking through the tube system just as nervously as the informant himself would have. Percival might have missed it, if he hadn’t spent years diligently cultivating his network of informants, down to the details that seperated the usual MACUSA memo mice from the likes of this skittish manifestation; if he had, he’d have found it in a month or two, crumpled up and blending in with the rare dust-bunnies that periodically colonized the darker corners of his office—and only still whole to eek out so feral an existence because his wards were specifically designed to prevent self-immolation or escape.

"Delgato," the Director rasped, and jerked his head in invitation when the man looked up from the half-assed job Percival could tell he was doing on his current report--ostensibly wrapping up the last details on some petty ingredients trafficking that had been more for the sake of training his rookie-in-tow than anything that needed Delgato's brand of auroring. Which meant his Senior Aurors thought they were babysitting again.

On the other hand, it meant he had Delgato on-hand.

He handed over the note and gave Nick a moment to read it— flicking some magic across it with a stern frown when the paper tried to burn up in Delgato’s fingers, until it just smoked sullenly and resigned itself to being read.

The note earned a whistle, long and low and impressed.

"Never seen Gnarlack blink first. He's been running our lot off more often than not since last winter. Goldstein must've really pissed him off; he's jacked his prices again too. Will he make good?"

He offered Nick a grim little smile and a sharp nod. Gnarlack would make good; he wouldn't have been in touch if he hadn't decided to play the game, provided Percival danced along— the time-honored tradition of the magical underworld jerking the Director of Magical Security around by the metaphorical cock was far from abandoned, but Percival liked to think it required a bit more finesse these days, and Gnarlack's subtleties were more profitably directed elsewhere. It went a long way to easing relations with all the other factions that were even less cooperatively-inclined toward MACUSA and Magical Security in particular.

What _was_ surprising was that he'd spoken up so quickly. If Gnarlack was offering information instead of making Percival threaten it out of him, he was doing his damndest to cover his ass.

Which meant it was bad or it was big, and he'd be expecting a hefty payout from no fewer than three different directions, the least of which would be MACUSA's tips and tricks fund.

"Needs an escort. One of the smaller offices next to records; not past the bull pen. Keep him out of the elevator, please."

"Red's still holdin' a grudge, huh?"

That didn't need words in response, not when a desert-dry look did the work just as dwell—Red’s closest acquaintance with the concept of forgiveness was to squint warily as if it were a foreign word; a slight only a decade and some change in passing hardly qualified. And from his grin, Delgato was probably imagining something far more clever and biting than anything Percival would actually have said, so that was all to the good as well. 

_Shoo_ , he gestured, and turned back to poking pins into the tangled mess that the tracking spells were making of the big bullpen map.

  
  
  


Delgato’s timing was excellent: “Delivery for you, boss-man,” he called across the bullpen, not even an hour after being sent to collect their local kingpin. 

Percival wanted six more like him. He wouldn’t survive the stress of it, but there were worse causes; six more like Delgato and he could— and would, immediately, out of self-defense— retire. Six more of Weiss, and maybe he’d be able to retire without fear for his Department setting itself on fire in the first week.

The same could not be said of the Philadelphia chief, one Albert Pinceproud. Who rambled and repeated himself when nervous, even with nothing of use to say, and attempted to hide the fact by peppering in apparently random references to legal code. 

He was _exceedingly_ nervous.

If Percival had been of a mood to entertain himself, if the furious clenched dread of having a man languishing in enemy hands where every hour might be measured in blows—he might have spent some time following up on each inaccuracy; it would be fascinating, in the way watching two no-maj trucks crash was fascinating, a disaster at such a slow speed that the drivers had plenty of time to jump clear but no way to stop the disaster, to hear exactly what connection Princeproud imagined between the kidnapping-and-theft and management of seized magical animals currently at hand and the regulation of magical busking regulations 22-1 through 33-5b. 

The lengthy butchering of half a dozen other coded regulations, including a few of Percival’s own fought-for amendments to obliviation-use and treatment of magical-and-non-magical witnesses, would have been markedly less entertaining, even without a missing consultant.

Gnarlack had been waiting nearly ten minutes before Pinceproud had finished reporting nothing useful, sprinkled liberally with promises he wasn’t going to hold his position long enough to keep. Percival dismissed him with a nod and got creakily back up to his feet to attend to his ‘delivery’. Leaving Gnarlack to cool his heels for too long wasn’t going to solve any problems.

"Mr. Graves?” 

The voice raised hairs on the back of his neck — it wasn’t familiar, and it wasn’t too close behind him, but there was something — 

“I'm from the Congressional Implications Committee. If you have a moment, there's a few things that need to be cleared up. Just a quick interview; you understand."

There it was.

The speaker, when he turned— carefully, cane in hand and knee twinging— was a small-ish sort of man, bespectacled, pointedly neat in a grey-and-navy three piece, with the bright-sharp look of someone who had slept well and had access to coffee that was unlikely to require a spell-tempering on the steel carafe to keep it from corroding away to nothing. 

Implications.

Ah. 

Well. 

Yes, Percival understood perfectly well; from the superciliousness of the smirk on the man’s face to his perfectly matched, perfectly straight bow tie, all the way down to his pointy shined shoes, everything about the man was quite deliberately chosen to put anyone with the misfortune of encountering him—Percival, currently—immediately at a discomforting sartorial disadvantage. An impressive threat display, really.

But just because Percival _felt_ gritty and unpleasantly scruffy, and not especially well caffeinated, didn’t mean he permitted any that to reflect in his actual presentation—he'd learned the tricks of coming out of an all-nighter neatly well before his thirtieth birthday and by now those tricks were engrained to second-nature. His beard took more than twelve hours to come in dark enough for a shave and he’d swapped out yesterday’s waistcoat for the one from his office stash and combed his hair back to neatness an hour ago, just prior to tearing into Pinceproud and for exactly the same motives of psychological warfare that were being deployed against him now. His cuffs had stayed pinned, and his tie snugged—If he had to, and there had certainly been times where he had, he could go before a judge or Congress itself with ten minutes warning and no one not an auror would be much the wiser. 

But presentation aside, this visit threatened to be the sort of interview he wouldn't have liked even pressed and polished and well-rested; a glint of something pleased and anticipatory in the expression behind those spectacles. And at eight o'clock in the morning…

Speaking with Implications was never _not_ a trap, though usually they restrained themselves to evil little notes and building-wide flyer campaigns announcing the latest of public safety initiatives, and nevermind that those posters had little to do with safety and less to do with Magical Security. 

Even the freshest of Percival’s aurors knew to pull down the worst of them, the ones that encouraged magical citizens to report their neighbors for minor indiscretions, and gleefully extolled the _dangers_ of contact with no-maj. 

But except for the occasional bout of whining that Security and Implications should be working much more closely together—with Aurors as their wand arm, no doubt— the Implications Committee rarely had much reason to be in his Department; Percival worked hard to keep his people away from Congress proper, and did his damndest to keep all of their noses too clean for leverage. There was no good that could come of Aurors getting any cozier with the various committees and initiatives that claimed to govern them, not with all the expansionists and magical-supremacists that littered their ranks. What magical America did _not_ need was a standing army, _especially_ not with the no-maj economy as wildly stratified as it was, worsening every years and primed for a crash, and _their_ politicians already figuring stir up another war down in Central America to keep afloat—

He refused to have another Witch Hunt on his hands, sparked by greed, wizarding and no-man alike. And the Aurors weren’t going to become that strong arm that the expansionists wanted, not if he had anything to say about it.

"Excuse me," he said, voice forcibly as even as he could make it, and irritatingly raspy with the effort. "I don't believe you’re on my calendar, mister--?"

"I work with Councilor Ockham, Mr. Graves. Just a moment of your time. Perhaps in your office." He smiled thinly, all oiled courtesy.

Percival refrained from huffing his disdain — there was no good time for a _chat_ with Implications, and certainly not at eight a.m. on a Saturday morning, running a rescue operation on an hour of sleep and too many cups of coffee. And when he found out exactly _how_ Implications had known enough to find him here, on a Saturday morning, after an all-nighter for a case…

"Poor timing, I’m afraid. You'll need to speak with my secretary."

Mrs. Colon knew better than to give anyone from Implications the time of day, and had a knack for pulling information out of all the other aids and secretaries. Ockham was a relatively new addition to the ranks of Congress, representing South Carolina. So far as Graves knew, there hadn’t any misgiving between them, prior to this stunt; his appointment to the committee must have been recent, or quiet enough that he hadn’t needed to double-check their roster.

But the room had gone muffled, watching out from under lashes and from behind reports. The intended damage had already been done; disappearing into his office after this little performance for the actual threats or blackmail attempt would only fan the flames further and cause real trouble, if only the occasional chortle over drinks and moment-of-pause for speculation. Better to gamble that the gentleman from South Carolina had nothing of substance than be seen in front of Aurors whose respect he demanded with something to hide.

"As it concerns your current position, Mr. Graves, I think it might be _wise_ to speak now."

Percival let his eyebrows climb a bit. The room had gone quiet, the shuffle of first shift prepping for morning training despite the delay, and the last dogged few of third shift wrapping up the last of a long night all going still. A scattering of Senior Aurors who weren't already dispatched to their cases; a few of the aides and secretaries that darted between Aurors and all the supporting bureaucracy that made up the Magical Security department. All watching, some surreptitiously, some with blatant frowns and narrowed gazes— it wasn’t every day that someone from the actual Congress offices wandered into their department and threatened the Director. 

Not before Grindelwald, and certainly not _after_.

A few were grinning— he didn’t need to look to know that it would be mostly Delgato, and the Juniors he was permitted to train, because he was a madman who trained clowns to enjoy inter-departmental tragicomedies. From the genuine worry in a few other expressions in his sightlines, including the elder Goldstein, Delgato would be training a handful more before midsummer.

"Fine. Two minutes," he decided aloud, and ruthlessly suppressed the clenching flutter of rebellious vocal cords, and the slow writhing twist of anxiety under his diaphragm. The warm satisfaction of a gobsmacked expression helped some little bit; this lackey was either still new to the job or entirely unused to having his intended victims reject the false safety of privacy. "Go on, then," Percival prodded, getting out his watch to mark the time and flustering the man all the more.

“I—It would behoove you, Mr. Graves, to—”

“Director,” he corrected mildly.

“—I beg your pardon?”

 _As you ought to_ , he thought uncharitably, and firmly swallowed the moths flickering in his throat. “Unless you have a pink slip signed by the President, it’s Director Graves. What is the problem?”

“After several complaints and a review of your behavior, your conduct is considered unbecoming,” he snipped. “You would do well to consider this a warning to maintain decency consistent with the position you are _currently_ so fortunate to hold. If it continues, your resignation will be requested.”

Percival hummed, and glanced at his watch again, enjoying the way it made the little weasel in front of him bristle, a tiny recompense for the chill of hopefully needless fear in his belly.

Complaints about auror conduct went through a process of review, these days--used to be that process had been entirely the purview of their direct superiors and kept off his desk entirely. Permitting complaints about the Director was a fairly new idea; the laws on the books up until the 1760s had permitted a publicly held duel to handle accusations of treason or misconduct, with little else to say about the matter; now, complaints were directed to Picquery and the other members of the Justice council, and vice versa; he’d have been informed promptly if there had been any filed or if another official review had been scheduled by that group: Congress hadn’t been shy about using those new procedures just a few short months ago. 

Implications, the particularly tenacious Congressional hold-over from the days of panic over Bartholomew Barebones and Dorcus Twelvetrees that they were, wasn’t a part of that review process at all. Officially, their remit was the investigation of expressed loyalties, rather than broken laws or day-to-day peace-keeping. 

Unofficially — well. Perhaps Implications had started out with honorable intentions. He had his doubts. But by the turn of the century it had been solidly concerned with stripping those deemed both insufficiently circumspect and insufficiently capable of buying forgiveness of their belongings; Bartholomew Barebone hadn’t had anything worth seizing, especially not when the No-maj authorities had finished with him, but other descendants of the Scourers had. And no one who was anyone, or aspired to be, could ever quite forget the wealth of those original Scourers; seized and divided amongst the Founders and the other Original families, those nest eggs had served as the basis for most of the various wizarding compounds across the country. 

Including that of the Graves’. 

Twenty seconds left. “Which conduct, precisely?”

“It is unprofessional to house a consultant in your own home,” he announced, with the air of someone revealing a winning hand. Percival’s eyebrows climbed higher. “And furthermore, it is unacceptable that you should monopolize his time while he is employed by your Department and unable to escape your _attentions_.”

He let the clock tick one heartbeat, two heartbeats past the two minute mark while he regarded the man and left the incredulity to sit plainly on his face to conceal the cold blooming under his heart, while his Aurors tried, with varying but mostly poor measures of success, to stifle snorts and giggles of startled amusement. 

The day ‘indecency’ was used to actually condemn nepotism or the harassment of one’s secretary or the various other abuses of power, well, that’d be a day to write home about, indeed. And perhaps they truly had nothing, nothing at all. Percival was discrete in his affairs; they were infrequent and held very distinct from the rest of his life— he had few allusions about his chances of keeping the title of Director if his preferences became known.

Perhaps the legacy of his last name wasn’t the shield it had been, without a wife and an heir to prop it up; this was the sort of accusation that _confirmed bachelors_ learned to dread, nearly by instinct. 

And, well, a wizard might call another husband by law, and well-aged money and power tended to buy a degree of eccentricity, but it was not the _done thing_ in the old pureblood lines, not when the enchantments on the old houses were tied to blood, and property to the on-going magic of the name—perhaps a gentleman kept on the side might be overlooked, if he was beautiful and circumspect, but only if the wife was in turn boldly and beautifully dressed, and the children darling and well-mannered.

It _certainly_ wasn’t the done thing in government work: it was a given, that the highest reaches of American politics were reserved near-exclusively for the Original Families, the Aurors and Seers and Landsingers and Alchemists and half a dozen others, credited for carving out a new order to mop up the blood and chaos of the witch trials before they spread to the rest of the colonies, and rewarded for that strength with any riches they had managed to cart off. 

But the expectation was that those sons and daughters who took their supposedly rightful places in MACUSA did so _after_ their wild oats were sown, ready to settle down to their proper marriages and the raising of their proper children and carry on tradition as handed down by their sternly proper forefathers, designed to help thoroughly feather each others’ nests.

Gondulphus Graves had surely been one of the sternest among those original aurors— and his several-times great-grandson made a point to look the part. Because Pellinor Graves had been a romantic and only ever matched in that by his beautiful wife, but by all the gods, he’d been canny about it, and raised his son to wield power like a scalpel. Percival had taken to those lessons of chivalry perhaps too well: he’d gotten away with an awful lot, shaping the Aurors into something perhaps a little too egalitarian, a little too inclined to actually protect and serve the populace for the comfort of his peers; perhaps he’d pushed a little too far, or perhaps someone really had caught wind that Percival Graves wasn’t quite sticking to the traditional script and didn’t quite intend to, ever. 

The only thing worse than an eccentric, after all, was a class traitor. One of their own, raised up in their image, turning against them.

Perhaps Grindelwald had stirred up the pot, and earned him this enmity. Or perhaps, with the lingering suggestion of the Graves line ending in tragedy, hanging like fresh blood in the water, the sharks were moving in— well, five months was practically generous for some of them, really, especially with the cane and the quiet serving as such blatant signifiers of weakness. 

He probably ought to have expected this months ago. 

In any case: a problem, potentially a massive one, if he wanted to keep his position as Director, and one that clutched his organs in a slow-tightening icy squeeze, because losing Director would be a blow, but losing it to the fears and envy of bigots would be a painful thing to weather: he’d have to watch them tear down his work from a remove and ward off the society vultures who felt entitled to both the fortune and the name by marriage in exchange for social forgiveness, until he finally died in disgrace... 

But those were strictly personal problems, and very much _not_ the one currently at hand. This minion had had his two minutes; Percival wasn’t sparing him a moment more.

“Inventive; though the Ghost has more narrative flare,” he permitted, to another round of poorly smothered chuckles, and coughed once to ease his protesting throat of its rasp. Too much talking, and much too much forcing words past the desperate clutching of quiet. “Do relay to International Affairs that your office disapproves of treating guests from the Ministry with hospitality; perhaps they have the time to laugh at you. I do not.”

The weasel was a flusher— he went brilliant red, and got a few more titters from the peanut gallery for his trouble. “If I were you, I would not _trivialize_ \--” 

“When I want Implication’s opinion, I will consult with the committee head myself.” He let himself glare, at last, put steel into words and pushed every last one of them out of his mouth: “Interrupt the workings of a case with nonsense like this again and I will have your access to this floor permanently revoked.”

“You—”

“Auror Watts will see you out.”

  
  
  


“The fucking _nerve_ of you, Percival Graves, dragging me here at fuckin’—”

He waved one of the coffees he’d brought with over to the table, just out of range of the sweep of Gnarlack’s arms— Gnarlack didn’t tend to wave them around when he was just talking, but on the three occasions Percival had seen him mad enough to actually shout, he gestured like a concert conductor — and limped to the seat opposite Gnarlack. Sank down in relief, with a flinch and a sigh as the bad knee clicked and eased a bit. 

“Cream?” There was sugar in the cup already; the only person he knew who could drink auror coffee straight from the pot was Weiss, and it was a widely and correctly feared ability. Even with milk, it only turned a sulky and objectively upsetting greyish color.

“—waiting nearly half an hour, you— _Eugh_ — an’ now yer tryin’ to poison me now, with your fuckin’ auror coffee?”

“Whenever you’re ready,” he drawled, and coughed, pushing the chipped creamer over.

“Sounds like you’ve been gargling caltrops, Graves—long night?” And there was the sly, creeping back in under the fury. Percival sighed again, and levered back up to his feet.

“Oi, where’dya think—where’re you going?”

“There’s plenty I could fill half an hour with while you drop the bullshit. Falka comes in at nine, she’ll need her desk. Delgato will take you down to interrogation to wait.”

“Ahh, fuckin’—come back, you miserable bastard. Keep your damned crup puppy away from me.”

“Hey, fuck you too, Gnarlack,” Delgato called through the door.

“Talk,” Percvial cut in, before they could really get into through the door.

“Alright, alright— first things first: I ain’t doing this ‘cause of what you said, I’m doing it ‘cause I want the nasty fuckers offa my terf an’ outta my city, an’ I figure you can do half the work while my boys clean them out, right?”

Percival refrained from rolling his eyes, too tired to have patience with posturing. Sitting would have been a mistake, entirely too close to laying down, except for how his knee complained. “Details, Gnarlack. I’ve got a man missing, so if you’re wasting my time—”

“Fuckin’— fine, this here’s how serious it fuckin’ is,” the goblin grumbled, digging in his jacket, and thumped down a heavy metal box studded with airholes, shoving it over. “Eh?”

Percival regarded him steadily while he took it, passed a hex-revealing charm over it with the wave of a hand—and opened it, pointedly away from his face.

Lucky he had — the little beast inside came out like a whirling fury, sharp stick legs flailing and a high-pitched chittering war cry.

“Picket,” he said, with not just a little surprise, and caught the bowtruckle before he could turn those sharp little arms on Gnarlack. It earned him the pokey sort of thud of tiny elbow and the drum of tiny fists against his hand, but the bowtruckle let himself be tugged gently back, and scrambled up his collar to chitter furiously from that perch instead.

“Hey, that’s what yer boy called it, too, last year. Yeah, you’d best stay with the Director, little lock-pick, I ain’t givin’ you back again,” Gnarlack said, with an ugly sort of smile—not even one of his charmingly avaricious ones, not with the coldness in his eyes that remained even when he looked back to Graves, ugly smile dripping away and leaving him looking—

Pale, and more hollowed out than Percival had ever seen him, in nearly twenty years of acquaintance.

“I think you’d best explain,” Percival rasped. 

“Yeah,” Gnarlack agreed, and reached for his coffee cup again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all for your patience, and for sticking with me.


	14. Chapter 14

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Uh. My angsty-fluffy 7k oneshot turned into a legitimate case fic, and now there's, like. a real plot? This is the pre-mission montage, and if folks are ticking off against the hero's journey, we're in the challenges bit, before the abyss. Don't anyone point out that Gnarlack is somehow Obi Wan Kenobi, it makes me twitch.
> 
> So, content warnings -- there's the discussion of human (or sentient being) trafficking, and mention of Veela with the implication of their labor being exploited or possible involuntary, as well as the implication of harm intended for animals. There's also the implication of past police brutality and misconduct, including involuntary use of veritaserum, and the threat of peril associated with that. 
> 
> Finally, Percival forces himself to talk rather a lot in this chapter and in the last chapter. To clarify; this is not an indication of healing, and it will have rebounding consequences. Mild spoilers below in an explanation of how the neurochemistry is interacting with the psychology.
> 
> For folks who are wondering how: there's several steps to a stress response: an initial jump in epinephrine, and then a second stage of prolonged awareness while the body basically waits to see if there's gonna be a tiger to run away from, called the HPA axis. The third stage is when the body decides there isn't a tiger, and relaxes to recover. Percival is riding that second stage with little blips of higher-intensity stress, without allowing himself to slip into the recovery stage. He's able to do it primarily because he's got a lot of practice managing stress without succumbing to distress, and also because of how he's rationalizing his trauma: he didn't speak while Grindelwald had him in order to protect himself and others, and he's able to temporarily game his own anxiety in order to do what's needed to protect himself and others again now. (with the help of some seriously interesting brain chemicals and the training provided by a long stressful career of managing chronic stress, so he's essentially steamrolling his own anxiety. From experience, it is less than fun and not so good for you.) Psychologically speaking, he's managing to avoid overt negative valent thoughts through focusing on the process of preparing for the rescue mission, and treating that preparation like a spiky sort of meditation, but in his case it's more like disassociation--he's forcing it, rather than easing it, and it makes him vulnerable to a few 'pings' of anxiety that break through during the day. He needs his voice in order to get this done, so he has it, but it's less a choice and more an additional, semi-self inflicted trauma overriding the selective mutism. 
> 
> You'll notice he isn't complaining very much about the pain in his leg either; same deal, he's got a steady trickle of endorphins keeping him ready to run from the brain tigers he's wrangling. He's riding a massive eustress physiological response right now in preparation for an even more massive adrenaline spike in the next chapter.

“There’s an auction, see,” Gnarlack repeated. It ought to be entirely surreal, how he folded smaller, slump-shouldered and shaken—Gnarlack wasn’t by any means a small goblin, and the cut of his suits never failed to emphasize it. 

Percival steeled himself, against whatever it was that could shock and horrify _Gnarlack_ , of all people. There wasn’t much, he knew, and even less now than there had been twenty years ago, but Gnarlack had never played at being shaken, either. 

“Usually stays overseas, but with everything that’s been going on, I guess they’re branching out, since it’s here for the week, an’ heading down toward the Gulf after that. Been around, eh, ten years, maybe. Dunno who owns it, properly; the auctioneer’s this wispy old fuck from Switzerland. Me? I stick to these parts, got enough to manage with the east coast, an’ my French ain’t the best. So this’s the first year they’re here, I gotta check it out, see what’s coming in, what’s goin’ out—you get it,” he concluded, correctly reading Percival’s face. 

“Auction runs outta a, whaddaya call—a passenger liner, the _Golden Snidget_. Not so big as the fancy one what sank a few years ago, but plenty big. Little stuff—” he gestured to the bowtruckle clinging to Percival’s collar, “— was going all week while the last few lots came in, so’s that the buyers can see. The big auction is by invitation only—gotta have enough skin in the game to be invited, and it ain’t penny stakes; they go out to international waters for the auction proper, an’ you make your own way back. An’ these fuckers move _everything_ —antiquities, gold, Class A substances, Class D substances, potions ingredients— live, mostly.”

“What’s the collateral you put up for the invite?”

Gnarlack eyed him. “Nothin’ that won’t resolve itself if that boat burns down tonight. Otherwise—well, let’s just say, I’ll send ya a postcard with tropical birds on it, eh?”

Percival hummed, non-committal, but nodded him on.

“As I was sayin—these fuckers move everything—your favorite nuisance was kickin’ up a real fuckin’ fuss about the state of the unicorns.”

“He’s alive, then.”

“Oh, yeah,” Gnarlack agreed, “He’s still kickin’—fer now, anyway. 

“But the point is: I want ‘em shut down. Not just ‘cause they move everything under the sun, an’ it’s hurting my bottom line—those horses youse were using as bait, found out why they were floating around: insurance fraud, actually. Little bastard getting rid of them went ahead and sold ‘em on to the _Golden Snidget_ instead of sendin’ ‘em straight for crup chow. They were _supposed_ to be a lot, to double the cash in his paws once the insurance money cleared, minus a little off the top for movin’ them around and bribin’ the—your, heh, _esteemed_ colleagues, down in Philadelphia.” 

“The point, please,” he asked, though if Gnarlack was rattled enough to start offering that sort of dirt, without any hint of equal exchange or protection, Percival probably ought to just let him ramble.

“But Scamander—turns out he’s _much_ better than some steeplechase ponies. ‘Cause the _Snidget_ don’t just move stuff, or animals, oh, no. The fuckers move _people_ . A whole lotta fuckin’ people. All sorts, too—couple’a merfolk in these big tanks, some poor little girl with a snake curse, a dozen kiddie house elves, fuckin’ no-majs, or maybe Squibs, don’t even speak English. Snatched a couple of goblin curse-breakers pulled off a Gringotts’ venture, a month or two ago, an’ what’s probably a selkie, though who can tell, rightly—an’ your Mr. Scamander, of course. Turns out yer boy made a whole lotta real nasty fuckers _real_ fuckin’ angry; he’s gonna pull in a fuckin’ mint so’s those nasty fuckers can take it out of his hide an’ ransom his carcass back to the Ministry.”

Fuck.

It bore repeating. “ _Fuck_.” 

“Yeah, that’s about what I said, fuck. ‘S a slick fuckin’ operation, and it’s fuckin’ _sick_. What’re you gonna do about it, Graves?”

“Think you said it yourself,” he managed. “We’ll have to verify, and then we’re going to burn them down.”

There was relief in how Gnarlack sat back into his borrowed chair, taking the mug with him. “I can— The big auction’s tonight: boarding at ten, off by ten-thirty, sharp. Pre-show’s at eleven, probably Veela, to get the crowd goin’; auction at midnight, the cliche bastards.” He drank, and scowled, as if he’d forgotten, auror coffee. “I can’t tell you where they’re docked, or where they’re heading out to. An’ it’ll be a bad fuckin’ time fer all of us, if you dose me.”

“No warrant,” Percival pointed out. “Can’t use veritaserum without one.” 

They both knew that wouldn’t have stopped Percival’s predecessors—hence the security of whatever curse or hex was attached to Gnarlack’s invitation—or that there were nastier truth serums in the world than veritaserum.

“Give me what you can,” Percival said, pulling out his pen and notepad.

  
  
  


“Don’t _even_ ,” he growled at Delgato, who was hovering like he hadn’t been _specifically_ ordered to settle down, entirely too distinctive-looking and far too good in a wand fight to be spent on daylight reconnaissance, and gestured forward a handful of his other senior aurors, Bradford and Klinger and Hooper and their Junior mentees, to explain exactly how he wanted them to scope out the docks and exactly the traps he wanted them to start laying in preparation for the wee hours of the morning. He staunchly ignored the looks it got him, the curling ache of tangled emotions shoved down to sit heavy in his belly where it wouldn’t distract him much.

Gnarlack had given him what he could, in regards to the wards—well. Gnarlack had been shockingly forth-coming on a wide array of topics that, if they were true and accurate, would raise the likelihood of this operation going well from ‘nigh-impossible shitshow’ to ‘startlingly good chances’. Percival will wield that against him one day, the confirmation of the sorts of knowledge he could reasonably expect Gnarlack to keep floating in his head, and use it to wheedle and demand more details out of him forevermore, but for now, he had a raid to put together in scant hours: weeks, if not months of work to execute in under twelve hours, to have everything prepared before tonight’s auction began. 

But wards that pinged a goblin’s awareness were not the same as those that would prickle up a wizard’s nape, and his aurors were trained to recognize still more besides, because there was plenty that none of them would actively sense that would trip off every alarm on the boat, and a thousand other details that not even a criminal of Gnarlack’s caliber would know to look for or share. 

He needed mountains of information, and he needed it weeks ago, but the next best time was immediately. Once Bradford and Klinger and Hooper were on their way, he’d send the next group down to take over strong-arming the Philadelphians, so that Weiss and O’Sullivan could snatch a few hours of rest in preparation. And once that was arranged, he’d pull in anyone who could be spared with subtlety from the five next-closest stations, and have them bring their own dueling leathers. There were half a dozen boats to wrangle as well a handful of flyers, fanning out in the harbor to keep the _Snidget_ precisely where he wanted it and the no-maj Harbor Authority well out of the way.

Percival took a moment—and only a moment, he didn’t have more—to cough ferociously, head and throat aching under the strain of forcing out the equivalent of months worth of words, and tried not to think about the worry he glimpsed reflected on various faces. Compared to _before_ Grindelwald, this was. Well, it wasn’t _nothing_ , but it was a quarterly emergency at best; and if he didn’t do it, it wouldn’t get done; he wasn’t losing people and flubbing a operation for the sake of a few hang-ups and some personal discomfort. 

He drank another cup of coffee in a few long swallows and entirely without tasting it, and offered the little bowtruckle peeking out of his vest pocket a bottle-cap full of water.

And waded back in to the work.

  
  


Perhaps the biggest problem was that he was in no small part obligated to inform the Ministry that one of theirs was in peril.

Or rather, the biggest problem wasn’t that Newt Scamander was once again embroiled in deadly danger while in American jurisdiction, nor was it that a fire-call to that effect would have Theseus Scamander—shoo-in for the next Head Auror and likely Minister of Magic from there—so far up his ass that he’d be lucky to make it through the night without hexing the man unconscious just to be able to hear himself think—

—The problem wasn’t even that Newt fucking Scamander had pissed off a dozen or more (if Gnarlack was to be believed, and Percival was sure he was, at least in this) of the nastiest members of the wizarding world’s cadre of international criminals in his endless quest to preserve those most vulnerable magical beasts. 

No, the problem was that Newt fucking Scamander had apparently decided, at some point in his beast-addled, post-war, post-dragon-riding madness, was that the next best possible thrill was not merely to traffic those magical beasts, but to play courrier and carry information alongside his animals, from one group of anti-colonial revolutionaries to another, and to at least three more on top of that. The Shanghai Resistance’s notes to Delhi’s radicals, Delhi to Egypt and Iraq, to Dublin, Afghanistan,— et-fuckin’-cetera, as Gnarlack had so charmingly put it, when Percival had (naively, he thinks now, like a right fucking idiot, given how hard the goblin had laughed) asked what they were after from a magizoologist who was missing his so-very-valuable case. 

Every slave runner, every ingredient poacher, every treasure hunter—anyone at all who had something invested in the chaos created by British rule over its fractious, unwilling empire had something material to gain from putting Scamander down like a dog; and the _Golden Snidget_ would bring the cruelest of them together to give them the opportunity to pay dearly for the chance at the sport of it.

And Percival had put Newt in the path of these people. Inadvertently, but that didn’t make him any less responsible. 

Bringing in Theseus Scamander, and all the aurors and resources he could bring with him, was going to require explaining _exactly_ why it was that Newt Scamanader was in danger in the first place. Pulling Newt out of hell just to turn him over to the tender mercies of the British Ministry, with accusations of accessory to treason and criminal subversion flying about—

Well, that just didn’t sit quite right at all.

He caught an hour and a half of sleep in his office chair when his eyes started blurring as well as burning, and Mrs. Colon’s glare became properly, sternly audible. He’d raised Eily’s thermos as defense against threats of appealing to a higher power, nodded contritely in promise to eat and sleep, and had gulped down the still-warm wonder of Eily’s vegetable bisque while he wrote out instructions for what needed to happen while he napped: a refresher in the protocols for group operations and acceptable levels of force, organizing back-up and having medical on stand-by, as well as a write-up for Picquery, and a second one, press-ready and prepped to go immediately to the Ghost within an hour of wrapping up.

Percival woke groggy and half-deaf with the pounding of his pulse in his ears and Pickett tugging at his shirt collar, the usual raid-nap anxiety nightmare still clawing at him; he dragged himself up and limped out to prove himself alive to Mrs. Colon’s barely mollified expression, and to fetch another cup of coffee and a Pepper-up paired with a strong dose of anti-acid.

By the time he felt even passably human, there were confirmations from the other auror stations, from the boats and the flyers, and another slinking sort of memo from Gnarlack, detailing the defense charms his people would be wearing. The slow seep of the tide changing, bringing the possibility of victory with it.

If they were all very fucking lucky, anyway.

“Director Graves—” Mrs. Colon poked her head in. “We have the warrants back from the judge—it was Alocieus Narkinenny, and he’s written in a Rappaport exception for twelve hours under your discretion, in case the reported no-maj are actually Squibs.”

He closed his eyes, just for a moment, savoring. It was no substitute for those non-existent weeks of prep, but it wasn't the slap in the face it could have been. Twelve hours was nothing to sneeze at: he might even manage to get those no-maj interviewed without resorting to filing six extra forms a piece.

And it definitely made the last seventeen hours of effort enough to be getting on with.

  
  
  


His best leathers were at home—which was good, since the second-best set that he kept in the office closet positively _reeked_ of Grindelwald’s magic when he reached for them, violent in a way that had him stumbling back from the closet in fright, a shout dying unuttered in his throat and his knee throbbing warning against any more panicked acrobatics without the support of his cane.

He became aware that he’d been staring for several dragging moments at the limp crumple of the dueling leathers fallen to the floor only when Pickett regained his courage and came out from under Percival’s lapel, where he’d apparently fallen asleep until Percival had decided to behave like a lunatic, with his tiny fists raised in reignited fury.

Cursing, or at least mouthing them, since there was a fist cinched tight around his vocal cords again, he fetched gloves from his desk. With another moment to steel himself against the skin-crawling disgust, he yanked the leathers up and out of the closet, started a thorough pat down. 

He’d burn them himself, and take pleasure in the destruction, but not before the Tracking and Forensics division had a turn with them. 

There wasn’t anything obviously in the pockets; a bit of a fizzle in the air from where containment and concealing charms had fallen apart over the past hours. No wonder everything felt foul. He hadn’t particularly needed anything from the closet until this morning—five months was a long time to not have had to stay late enough to need a change of clothes, but it had been a quiet five months, and he’d been benched from ops or scheduled double-shifts. The jostling from this morning must have overtaxed the charms to the point of breaking.

Fucker, he snarled silently, willing his heart to settle and stop pounding quite so hard, casting a furiously strong stasis charm and shoved them back in, as far away from everything else in the closet as possible. Monday was soon enough for that; Forensics would have other things to be thinking about this weekend.

But it did mean he needed to stop at home and collect a few things. The workers down at the docks, wizarding and no-maj alike, would be starting to trickle away in earnest soon as the light failed, with the much smaller night shift straggling in—it was nearly time to start hustling his aurors into position, and start tailoring the mission on the fly.

“Eat while you’re at home,” Mrs. Colon demanded, packing up her things for the evening when he let himself out of the office: seven in the evening was her strict limit on staying late, as her husband worked nights. However that worked, it worked to their satisfaction. “You’ll catch your death, running around with nothing in your belly.”

_Thank you, Mrs. Colon_ , he sketched in the air.

He wasn’t going to be doing much running around at all—the knee was a liability bar none in a true combat situation, but they’d need him, to run the op, and for shattering the wards, putting some oomph into curse-breaking any timed hexes that might endanger the captives, wrangling a goblin crime lord who was going to do his damndest to scoop up every possible scrap of what was rightly evidence and even more correctly _contraband_. 

If he thought about it too hard, that argument to come, he would only worsen the headache.

So he didn’t, just gave Mrs. Colon a wave farewell and apparated home instead.

  
  
  


“You’ve not finished at the office, have you?” Eily asked, without glancing up from the delicate task of getting Tomas to eat his portion of mashed peas. The current attempt involved honey drizzled on, which seemed to be gaining a great deal more traction than previous attempts. Fortunately, the bath would be at the ready, since Kit had already corralled the other two little ones into it.

He shook his head—even his hum was scratchy, when he offered that instead; and his voice was downright hoarse: “Mr. Scamander has decided to make an excellent impression; he’s brought me a black market auction to dismantle.”

“You did mention he was the type for mischief.”

Percival nodded again, dashing pepper over a hastily constructed pile of ham slivers and hard cheese, the last slice of the first of the tomatoes, perched precariously on a generous section of Kit’s bread. There were no fewer than three loaves and a selection of muffins, still cooling on a rack—he was worrying them again, if Kit’s baking had reached such extravagance, but at least Kit’s hands weren’t suffering for the wards earlier, not if he was up to kneading that much bread. 

The hearth clock’s minute hand edged toward the two: he’d be off before it hit the four. He was already armored from the waist down in dark grey dueling leathers, tall boots snug, wand holster secure, and belt weighted with a medkit and a wide-mouthed bag of carrying where he’d stashed Newt’s case and the heavy ward-breaking kit; the thickly-spelled jacket was entirely too warm for the kitchen but it would be a welcome respite once he was down by the water.

“I’m writing his brother before I go,” he managed, and slathered his second piece of bread with mustard. 

“Your Mr. Scamander is in the Waterhouse rooms; shall his brother have the other bedchamber in that suite or the Danby rooms? That’s for eating, boy-o, not for wearing.”

“He may prefer a hotel, if he comes,” Percival pointed out, leaning over the sink to make quick work of the sandwich — as ever, Mrs. Colon was entirely correct; a ham sandwich had no right to taste quite so fantastic, no matter the genius of Eily and Kit’s contributions. The preemptive AcheAway and PepperUp helped too; easier to have an appetite with the pounding in his temples pushed down, but even the sandwich was going to sit like a stone unless he managed to settle himself a little more.

He would, at some point, need to sleep, but that was going to have to wait a little longer.

“In with the Danby landscapes, then, to give your gentleman some privacy,” Eily decided crisply, ignoring the splutter of Percival half-inhaling his last bite by accident, as if the wealth of implications she’d embedded in a single sentence were simply Percival’s imagination. “There, look at that dish, so clean! No more peas! Aren’t you clever, my little man? All done!” 

There wouldn’t have been much to say to that, not even with the easy command over spoken word he’d had as a boy and plenty of time to spend protesting while Eily just smiled serenely; as it was, he had a note to draft and put through the Floo and a clock ticking down rapidly.

Percival measured out coffee to brew while he tidied up the last few tasks; even with all that still needed doing, the hours out in the cold wind would wear cruelly and drag out, testing everyone's ability to keep alert.

“You’re to take some of those muffins with you,” Eily told him, mock-stern over Tomas’s honey-sweet giggles. “We’ll never finish them all here.”

Who knew what sort of schedule the _Golden Snidget_ fed their hostages on, so he nodded briskly and fetched out a cloth; there would be coffee and food in the bullpen to keep everyone moving long enough for debrief and the post-operation work, and the medics always brought some manner of supplies with them, but it never hurt to have something on hand. If all else failed, there were always Juniors that would leap at the opportunity for freely offered baked goods, and that's what bags of carrying were for, really--carrying that tiny indulgence onto a battlefield, where it undoubtedly would make a world of difference to _someone's_ day.

The minute hand inched past the two.


	15. Chapter 15

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Aaah -- as usual, this is rough and you lovely people deserve better, but this is what I've got, and midterms are looming, somehow. I don't know how, exactly, and my advisors are demanding brilliance. So the next one will probably be a while, but eventually I'll manage to get this damned fic back on track.

The containment wards didn’t _actually_ offer the sound of a portcullis dropping into place, but the thud of them against his magic always evoked the same satisfying sensation, as familiar and comforting to him as the slam of the bull-pen door — one of those ingrained, nearly physiological signals that it was Time To Go To Work.

Graves' stride didn’t catch as the wards came down, that heavy deadened feeling that hung in the air like fire smoke or city smog, but the auror to his left tripped a bit. And had steadied again before her partner could finish reaching out, before Graves could effectively switch hands on his cane to think about doing the same. Other than that, none of them broke stride, moving as fast as his leg would permit down the narrow, thick-carpeted hall deep in tge underbelly of the ship.

He counted silent beats into the fraught quiet seeping through the communication spells the team leaders were carrying, as they closed in on the main gathering: the wards coming down had produced some murmurs in the auction hall, a few muffled exclamations, but that was all. 

Which wasn’t entirely usual — most wizards, especially the sort who auctioned people, weren’t usually so calm when their ability to escape was cut off. This sort of machination must be at least partially expected from the auction-master, to garner so little panic. But they'd still need to move fast, to keep the actual staff from raising any alarm.

Helpfully, the auction-runners dressed their guards in footmen’s livery, and even more helpfully, they had color-coded them: a grey-blue for the grunts, a motley assortment with oft-fingered wands in hip holsters, and black with garish silver trim for those who directed them, pretending at civility with shoulder holsters poorly hidden beneath their jackets. Graves could only speculate as to the quality of their hiring practices, but there were a dozen aurors scattered among them now, those ugly jackets hastily yanked on over dueling leathers and their original owners already being taken back to the Woolworth by the ground team.

“In position,” Delgato breathed, hardly audible. He’d be nearest the stage, his team slid into place: they’d have taken any liveried stragglers in reach down, easy and quiet with Somnus, slipping back-stage if they could—and above all, covering for Weiss’s team to get round the back of the hall unnoticed, trapping the bulk of the buyers and the guards between them. In another minute, O’Sullivan would have the navigation room under control: they’d go another hundred or so yards out into the bay, and be prepared for the pandemonium that would erupt when the boat stilled, more than thirty minutes too soon.

Even with the reinforcements from upstate and the rest of New England, it was a big damn boat, with more guards and staff than Percival had hoped to see; every last auror not flying or out in one of the other boats with the waiting Medical staff was needed to secure the ship. The hostages needed to be safe, and he'd prefer to have every buyer on the ship walk out in the same shackles as the slavers and contaband-couriers. 

Besides the groups his Senior Aurors were leading, there were a dozen three-man teams crawling through the rest of the place at a steady clip, a surrusus of murmured ‘clear’ or ‘two in the fourth floor dining hall—now clear; heading into food prep area’ in his ears. Every now and then, there was the crackle of spellwork; even more rarely the growl of a verbal casting.

Graves and the two aurors with him, one of the pairs called down from Boston, were headed for the hold where Gnarlack had said the live lots were being held, in long rows of cages and with only two entrances: one out toward the backstage of the auction hall, where they’d be lifted onto the stage, the other accessible from one of the long-side loading decks. If it could be taken, a pair of them could hold it indefinitely until backup arrived, while the third was free to get eyes on Scamander and assess the condition of the other hostages.

“In position. At your signal, boss?”

“Your discretion, O’Sullivan,” he demurred, and tucked up beside the corner they’d be rounding in a moment. Auror Barnes-Brassbottom directed a slick little mirroring charm at the ground—if it was hers, he’d have her down to the Woolworth to teach it at some point, because it was impressively subtle—and held up a hand, all five fingers spread wide, then mimed smoking: five, all lax. He could hear them faintly, the murmur of not-quite-off-duty conversation that was loosening up by the moment as the ship moved out of harbor, loud enough and jocular enough to echo down the hall. Gnarlack had been entirely correct to assume that security would be lightest as they moved out into deeper water. “--But I’d appreciate two minutes.” 

“You got it,” O’Sullivan agreed, the rustle of his coat—firmly _his_ battered grayish macintosh, he’d sneered prodigiously at the offer of one of the stolen ones—loud over the spell as he signaled his team.

Barnes-Brassbottom was the shortest of them; her partner, a very tall black man who’d introduced himself at the start of the evening with an excellent handshake and a slow-growing smile as Jefferson Ignatius Ivesley, had nearly a full head on Graves. Two hand gestures and a lifted eyebrow sorted who would go high and who low as they rounded the corner— always nice when it didn’t require any fuss. 

They turned it as damn-near a single organism, even with his cane, which was a pleasing start to any maneuver; wands at the ready and spells in the air before the guards had even had a chance to jolt at their sudden appearance. Graves had two fast stunners sailing off in short order, a broad-spread Somnus just after them from Ivesley that nailed one blue-clad boy and clipped another, and another slick spell from Barnes-Brassbottom, apparently harmless green sparks flaring distractingly bright off to the side with a nasty purple flare hard behind it that had its victim slumping bonelessly down the wall, limbs disturbingly limp.

“He’ll be fine in a few hours, sir,” Barnes-Brassbottom assured. He nodded, flicking out another stunner after the one still stumbling, half-Somnused but somehow still standing; he trickled down to join his colleagues flat out on the floor. There’d be time to work out if she was angling for a transfer for just herself or if this was for the both of them _after_ the hostages were free and comfortable.

“Let’s get them in and secured. O’Sullivan—you’re good to go.”  
  


The hold was as bad as Gnarlack said; worse, perhaps, since he hadn’t described the cloying stink of unwashed bodies and all manner of animal waste, doubtless worse for the closed windows and the choking dark. Lumos only lit the nearest half-dozen, gleaming eyes and cowering bodies behind heavy iron bars or trapped in cloudy glass tanks, lined up in the long rows exactly as Gnarlack had said: one against each wall and the third in the middle. Like some sort of depraved museum exhibit to human cruelty.

The worst was the noise, though, the muffled cacophony of suffering: stifled weeping and muffled whimpers, the heavy breathing and continuous shuffle-movement of creatures in distress. 

There was never any easy way to turn off the immediate leaden horror of having run face-first into such a wall of suffering, and he could see it tightening up the shoulders of both of the aurors with him. They might be too senior to lose control of themselves enough to vomit, and too well-trained to rage when there was work to be done, but they couldn’t be permitted to steep for any amount of time in that horror—it would make them slow and it would distract them.

So he made his voice hard, stern with the discipline he needed from them. “Straight to the other door—ward it hard. Then one of you straight back here. If he’s here and able, there’s a magizoologist who can do more than we can for the other captives and the animals; if not, we’ll need more hands before we get into it. Shout if there’s trouble, and don’t be heroes about it.”

“Sir,” they echoed sharply; if Barnes-Brassbottom looked furious and a bit green around the gills under lumos, then Ivesley was cold iron and sea ice. He nodded to them, and let them get out of the wandlight’s reach before he turned to ward the door they’d just come through. Hard, as he’d told the other two: weaving strength into the warp and weft of the ward like steel cord, tacking it to the thickness of the door so that they fed each other, and tying in the equivalent of sleigh bells that would jangle, if the door was hit by anything larger or meaner than a disoriented housefly.

O’Sullivan was counting down in his ear, and then the boat groaned to a halt, and the volume in the hold jumped—a half-scream from somewhere deeper in the dark, thin with panic, and the animals echoing it. The noise from the auction hall kicked up as well through the communication charm—a few shocked cries through Weiss’s, and a lot more grumbling near the front by Delgato. 

“Securing the hold now,” he murmured into the spell at his collar. “Weiss?”

“Set.”

“Delgato, on your mark,” he rasped, and turned sharply, wand coming to ready at a noise behind him, to find Ivesley jogging back.

“Ladies and gentlemen—”

Graves tuned out Delgato’s distracting circus-ring patter; Weiss was counting guards in a steady undertone as they dropped; both the liveried guards the auction employed and the personal security that the buyers brought with them. There was only another few moments before the panic would start in earnest there—even Delgato wasn’t good enough to distract people when half their protective details were on the ground, and even Weiss couldn’t drop them faster without drawing attention prematurely; half of the other auror teams were already working their way back through their cleared areas to provide reinforcements—they’d be needed to help mop up the pitched battle that was going to erupt momentarily, but they needed time to get there. 

“Only two on the other door, sir; Jane’s getting the door warded up now. We’ll have to watch out for the guards we’ve pulled in— there’s a few cages on the other side full of Veela, and they don’t seem so happy.”

“Good. No, I imagine they aren’t,” he rasped. “Give me a few minutes to get our friendly squared away and see about getting the lights up, and then we’ll see what can be done for them while we wait for Medical.”

“Yes, sir. And shout if you need help, sir—they’re panicking.”

“Who, the Veela?” He asked, but he rather thought he suspected: the air crackled with fear. It wasn’t just the Veela who were afraid.

“All of them, sir. Be careful.”

“You as well,” Graves nodded—and then paused another moment, head tilted to listen. “Klinger, how far out...good. Ivesley, wards down for friendlies in ten, nine—”

  
  


Klinger had brought his three-man team with him—his Junior, Carrilion, and another from one of the other departments, which was plenty to hold the doors and start in on a slow raising of lights, for the poor beasts and beings who’d been trapped in the dark for who knew how long to have a chance to acclimate. It wasn’t difficult magic, but it took concentration and control to bring them up so slowly, and keep them gentle enough.

And it gave him the freedom to leave them, and limp down toward where Ivesley had indicated most of the people were being held, closer to the stage door. The cages were smaller down this way, past the trio of pacing griffins and the tank full of what was seemingly smoke, hanging somehow despondent behind smeared glass.

The cages were being used to hold the people weren't tall enough for their occupants to stand, or move around a great deal—a Veela matriarch huddled in another nearby, clutching a toddling-age granddaughter close, and Newt—

Newt was confined to his knees by the press of iron bars, shuffled up close against them by the door to peer out and up, shirt cuffs dangling open and only half-rolled up where they tumbled back from his hands, curling carefully around the cold bars. The professorish jacket he’d had only a day ago was gone—perhaps taken, perhaps offered to one of the other captives, but his coat was in the case, so he’d be alright even in the chill of the hold once Percival got him out.

“Is this what will earn shouting, then?” Newt asked, with a darting, nervous sort of smile, the light just enough to show the glint of gingery bristle along that sharp jawline and over angular cheeks, the chaos of his ruffled hair.

“No,” Percival replied, looking him over. Bruised, likely sore from the full day of confinement— he doesn't look grievously wounded and there was shaky relief in Percival's belly, crackling like cold water against the deep fury that had been living there since Gnarlack told him, that anyone should think to keep _any_ breathing creature in such conditions, much less sentient beings. 

To say nothing of an elder, or a _child_. 

“Are you hurt?”

"No? Er—I mean, no, I’m not hurt, just bruises. No shouting?"

“No,” the lock was a little better than _alohomora_ would do, but only a very little, at least from the outside: it squeaked as his spell took it apart, ruined the mechanism and shredded the wards keeping Newt from doing it himself, with a deadly sort precision he didn’t care to reflect on. “I generally prefer some warning for this sort of thing, but this is far from a disappointment. What needs to happen for the creatures here?”

“I—if I had my case, and my wand, I. It isn’t difficult to section off areas, I could. I _can_ — Most of the creatures, and. But without—no, wait, that’s not what you asked, sorry. The, everyone will need food, and water. Blankets—someplace safe to sleep: most have been here for weeks.” 

Stiff indeed, and babbling a bit from the stress, though Percival imagined that if he placed Newt in front of an actual animal he’d find his mental balance promptly—and his joints popped audibly as he clambered out of the cage, off balance and terribly earnest. Another minute wouldn’t hurt, to help him re-acclimate, and the other caged hostages were watching keenly, waiting to see if there’d be danger, waiting to see what might happen to him.

“Medical is on their way with most of that and we’ll see about finding your wand. Can you get started without it, or no?”

“I—yes, of course, I can help, I could try to—”

“Newt,” Percival murmured, already forearm deep in the bag of carrying. Because his throat was bruise-sore and raw, and by all the friendly gods he would be having nightmares for months of this place, but Newt looked shaken and a little peaky, and practically vibrated with the adrenaline jag, and he was doing that _thing_ : trying to make himself seem small and uncomplicated, offering up his own helpfulness with a strange and terrible emphasis on how useful he could be— like it was in question, as though Percival was merely tolerating him, letting him use his skills, instead of having specifically hired him because of them.

It was something he was going to have to make clear at a later date, when Newt wasn’t shaking off the effects of unexpected captivity and the threat of deadly violence, and Percival could afford to divide his attention enough to actually be soothing and patient, when there weren’t _cages full of people_ becoming visible out of the dark.

Percival needed him standing for just an hour more—if that meant speaking explicitly, at length, he’d do it, sandpaper and glass or no. “I have your case here. You’re going to have to be in charge of the creatures until we can get you assistance from Ilvermorny: none of my aurors know them even half as well as you do. We’ll manage the people, as best we can, until Medical is able to arrive. Can you do without your wand while we find it, or do you need assistance?”

“I—you brought it? How—Where—”

He spared his throat the strain, and placed it in Newt’s hands instead of answering. Newt’s face crumbled a little, an alarming but not entirely unexpected reaction, eyes going gleaming wet in the slow-rising light, clutching it close to his body. They spilled a little on a horrid sob, cut off as Newt ducked so that his face was obscured, started sucking huge shaking breaths, fighting off the tears.

“I-I—sorry, I—um. Thank you. Thank you for keeping it safe. I—I’d never forgive myself, letting them—”

He nodded, settled a hand on Newt’s shoulder, as warm a gesture as could be allowed, between the setting and Newt’s obvious twitch—a brief startlement, instead of outright rejection, since he twitched _into_ the touch, and leaned into it harder once he'd settled out of the startle reflex, but a twitch nonetheless. 

“Take a moment,” Percival told him, and the rasp was frustrating, it made Newt’s eyebrows pinch together even as his breathing hitched once more and eased out to a steadier rhythm. He put a slightly battered muffin in Newt’s hands. “Eat this, slowly. But stay with me.”

He turned to the next cage—Newt needed a moment, and that was fine, but no one was going to suffer confinement for any longer than absolutely necessary. Not if he had something to say about it.

The Veela matriarch did not speak any English—neither did her daughter, in the cage beside hers, who shouted but didn't scream in a desperate attempt to ward them off until the lock clanked and the door creaked open. She was going to need more help than Newt had, getting out; confinement was hell on old bones, as he knew entirely too well, and Percival wasn’t interested in making an elder crawl when there were more dignified ways that would cause less pain. But the offer of another muffin was warily accepted, and she nodded agreement at his hand gestures that asked her to stay, stay for just another moment. The muffin crumbled into pinched-off chunks, shared between her and the little one while Percival turned to the next cage with intent.

She did speak a little French—enough that between Percival’s boyhood lessons and Newt’s piecemeal vocabulary gained traveling in the Alps, they managed to understand that Ilinka and all of her daughters had been taken from their home in Serbia nearly a year ago. She cried out, a soft, aching sound, to hear that they had come so far as New York. A few daughters had already been lost to other ports, if he understood correctly, if he was reading the anger in Newt’s face correctly. And there were other families here, that huddled in other cages, who weren’t hers but who she’d claim, gladly, if it meant they’d be safe.

Ilinka’s daughter scrambled for the door when he broke the lock, or tried to, snarling at the pain of struggling out of such a close confinement—Percival stepped sharply back out of her way and nearly tripped himself doing it, enough the Newt moved as well, _reached_ — but she only shuffled a single pace on her knees, to scoop up the toddler right at the door with a soft wail and bury her face in wispy white-blonde baby hair.

They perhaps didn’t trust that Percival was an auror—the cane did that, often enough, or perhaps didn’t trust aurors to be helpful to people like them, even if it was to help them out of a cage. But Ilinka let Newt crawl into the tight space to assist her, and nodded her satisfaction when Percival peeled apart the rest of the cage like a particularly stubborn tin can, allowing her to stand up with Newt’s help. And by the time Klinger and his junior had made it over, she and her daughter seemed to accept the need to wait for additional help to come and the rest of their family to be fetched safely back to them.

“I could—” Newt waved at the case. “The prairie would be more comfortable?”

He was fretting, as he recovered from the initial shock of being freed—kept darting glances between the slowly growing huddle of people, still frightened, and the animals he actually knew how to help, still caged for everyone's safety, and the case he’d poured so much of his power and skill into, that could do many things to improve how comfortable any or all of them were but would need, above all, time and trust—and access to his wand—in order to be used to any good effect.

“Feel free to ask,” Percival said, though from the wild-eyed looks from the no-majs Carrilion had just broken free, huddling away from the people with pointy sticks and terrifying powers and even flinching a little from their fellow captives— the beautiful golden-haired ladies who were still weeping softly and the child-sized house-elf who was rocking and murmuring worriedly over her unnamed master— none of the ex-hostages were going to be happy to climb back into a small space at the behest of a wand-holding wizard, and not even Newt’s earnestness was going to convince any of them. He’d have a better chance with the creatures, who likely wouldn’t trust either, but didn’t need to be convinced in quite the same way.

In a way, it was almost a relief: Tina Goldstein had been adamant in her report that Newt did not value human life or comfort over that of his creatures, to the point of potential liability. And perhaps that was true, more broadly— healthy adult wizards with wands-in-hand didn't generally need a great deal of defending from most magical animals. But sufficiently assured that he'd be permitted to care for the wounded and brutalized creatures without having to defend their right to life, it was heartening to see that Newt's priority was the comfort and safety of vulnerable people, and that he was extremely willing to put their safety ahead of his creatures' comfort. Percival had half expected he'd have to talk the magizoologist down from getting right into breaking cages for the beasts, and risk the mingling of panicking animals and frightened people. “But perhaps it might be easier to make a more comfortable space here.”

"Found 'em," a Junior called across the room, holding various wands aloft--he earned a collective flinch from the newly freed people huddling together, and ducked guiltily at the sharp look Percival offered. The auction room noise was dying down as well in Percival's ears— Gnarlack had started kicking up a fuss about getting cuffed, which he wouldn't have done if there were still unfriendlies waving wands around.

The spell crackled a bit, like getting boxed gently in the ear--Delgato always touched the damn thing the minute he wasn't required to be stealthy, and tonight was no exception. 

"Hey Boss. We’re cleaning up, up here. But I got— three? No, four, Veela girls here who don't seem to speak a lick of English. They need to be gotten out of here, like, yesterday, or somebody's gonna get hurt. I mean, _I_ don't mind if they wanna tear off a few faces, but—"

"Rest of the family is down here with me,” he replied, and coughed hard enough that he found himself grateful for the support of the cane. He’d need another round of potions sooner rather than later, to wrap the evening’s work up—not ideal, but he’d take it, and knock wood for how smoothly everything had gone so far. “—Sorry. Family's alright. I'll send Scamander and Carrilion to fetch them here, as soon as he's got a wand in hand. Should only be a few minutes. Try French, or Weiss might have some luck. We’re just waiting on a few more ‘clears’, and then it’s Medical’s show."

“Aye, aye, Captain.”


End file.
